Golgi-targeted fluorescent probe for nitric oxide imaging in Parkinson’s disease models

Nitric oxide (NO) regulates cell damage by neurotoxin and participates in neuronal cell death in Parkinson's disease (PD). A large number of nitric oxide synthases involved in the synthesis of NO exists in the Golgi apparatus and hence, exploring the Golgi NO in PD is of great significance. Fluorescent probes provide powerful non-invasive detection and imaging tools in life systems. However, Golgi-targetable fluorescent probe has not yet been reported to detect and disclose the level changes of Golgi NO in PD. Herein, we report a Golgi-targetable turn-on fluorescence probe Gol-NO for the detection of Golgi NO, which shows low cytotoxicity, high sensitivity (about 1.6 nM of detection limit) and selectivity, and rapid response (<1 min) for NO. Moreover, we show that it can detect not only endogenous and exogenous NO in cells and zebrafish but also the level changes of NO in the rotenone-induced cell and zebrafish PD models, indicating that Gol-NO is a valuable new tool to explore NO in Golgi and study PD.