A near-infrared fluorescence-on fluorescent probe for formaldehyde imaging in Arabidopsis thaliana

As a reactive carbonyl molecule, formaldehyde (FA) plays an important part in plant physiological and pathological activities. It is necessary to probe FA in plant for the study of its functions. In this paper, we report DISE, a dicyanoisophorone-based turn-on near-infrared fluorescent probe, which exhibits a highly sensitive response to FA. In addition, confocal imaging experiments showed that DISE could image endogenous and exogenous FA in Arabidopsis root tissue. It demonstrates that the probe has the potential to be an imaging tool to research the FA's biological roles in plant.