Photo‐Triggered, Fast, and Fluorogenic Thiophene‐Based Cycloalkynes for the Bioorthogonal Fluorescent Labeling of 1,3‐Dipole‐Tagged Molecules in No‐Wash Conditions

Description

Jurgen Schulz leads an eight-author team reporting a 2026 advance: light-activated labelling reagents fast enough to watch dilute biomolecules in real time. The bioorthogonal reaction, strain-promoted alkyne-azide cycloaddition, crawls at under one unit of rate on the reported scale, and excess dye must be washed away before imaging. The team's two thiophene-based cycloalkynes react with a range of 1,3-dipole tags at rates reaching 1528 on that scale, and they stay dark until they react.

Reaction switches the fluorescence on, brightening up to 150-fold, which removes the washing problem. The probes labelled a glycoprotein under no-wash conditions using as little as five micromolar reagent, finishing in under fifteen minutes while the team watched the signal build. Because the probes are photo-triggered, users also gain timing control over when labelling starts. The authors expect the reagents to open real-time imaging of scarce targets in complex environments.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/PMC13502660