Themed collection Most popular 2019-2020 analytical chemistry articles

Activatable molecualr agents that intergrate diagnosis and treatment modalities have attracted great attention due to its abilities of personalized therapy and real-time monitoring of therapeutic outcome.

Two-dimensional ultraviolet spectroscopy has the potential to deliver rich structural and dynamical information on biomolecules such as DNA and proteins.

The dynamic fluctuations of bioactive species in living cells are associated with numerous physiological and pathological phenomena. The emergence of organelle-targeted fluorescent probes has significantly facilitated our understanding on the biological functions of these species. This review describes the design, applications, challenges and potential directions of organelle-targeted bioactive species probes.

A self-assembled amphiphilic fluorescent probe allows pH-fluctuations within cancer cells and tumour tissues to be readily detected.

Pinkment, a resorufin based ONOO⁻ selective and sensitive ‘plug and play’ fluorescence-based platform for in vitro and in vivo use, enables facile functionalisation for various imaging and theranostic applications.

Real-time imaging of intracellular glutathione in response to cisplatin by a ratiometric fluorescent probe reveals that the different trends in intracellular GSH levels is crucial in distinguishing cisplatin-resistant from cisplatin-sensitive cells.

Fluoro-Coumarins are a novel class of far-red and near-infrared solvent sensitive dyes of exceptionally low molecular weight.

A near-infrared emitting fluorogenic dimer with environment-sensitive folding and exceptional brightness enables background-free and target-specific imaging of the naturally expressed oxytocin GPCR in living mice.

TinyPol binitroxides provide significantly higher DNP enhancement factors for solid-state NMR spectroscopy at high magnetic fields than today's reference radical AMPUPol.

Break down of the Born–Oppenheimer approximation is caused by mixing of electronic and vibrational transitions in the radical cations of some conjugated polymers, resulting in unusually intense vibrational bands known as infrared active vibrations (IRAVs).

Trp(redBODIPY) is the first red-emitting Trp-based amino acid for the preparation of fluorogenic peptides with retention of target binding affinity.

The first purely organic room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) luminogen, with singlet excimer emission and thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) effect, was successfully developed.

An aggregation-induced emission (AIE) dye-powered afterglow luminogen has been designed for in vivo tumor imaging. The underlying afterglow mechanism can be described as a closed-loop of “photon–¹O₂–SP intermediates–photon”.

Unprecedented photoluminescence, AIE and heat-induced emission characteristics of non-conjugated thermoresponsive PNVCL were unveiled for the very first time which eventually empowered PNVCL to act as an intracellular thermometer.

Two endoplasmic reticulum (ER) targeting probes were developed to image mobile Zn²⁺ to help understand Zn²⁺ related biological processes in the ER.

A “double-locked” and enzyme-activated molecular fluorescent probe for accurate bioimaging and hepatopathy differentiation.

The FeMoco cluster of Mo nitrogenase undergoes minor distortions upon reduction to E₁, supporting iron-based reduction and belt sulfide protonation.

A new strategy to create iridium(III)-based ECL labels reveals limitations of conventional approaches.

Highly selective fluorescent activity-based probe for the visualization of cathepsin B in cancer cells.

Theranostic nanoprobes (SYL NPs) prepared from a newly designed NIR-II fluorophore and FDA approved DSPE-mPEG5000 were well tolerated and exhibited multifunctional potential in diagnosis (photoacoustic & fluorescence imaging) and phototherapy in animal models.

A reactive oxygen species-triggered off-on fluorescence H₂S donor is develop for the real-time imaging of H₂S delivery and the cytoprotection against the hazardous oxidative environment.

A molecular design strategy is established to access diverse enzyme-activated probes that are excitable and emit in the NIR (I and II) region with favorable Stokes shifts, enabling targeted cancer imaging by real-time monitoring enzyme activities.

Probe C7 for the first time presents different modes of fluorescence signals to both nanomolar and micromolar concentrations of HOCl.

Branched catalytic hairpin assembly is proposed for dynamic self-assembly of DNA dendrimers for signal amplification and in situ imaging of microRNAs in live cells with high sensitivity and selectivity.

Enantiopure inherently chiral films with helicoidal stereogenicity of outstanding enantiodiscrimination potentialities for chiral redox probes and as spin filters.

The Unified Compendium is an online interactive tool that utilizes ion mobility collision cross sections to annotate biochemical molecules.

We describe an enzyme-regulated liberation strategy to in situ generate AIEgen nanoaggregates for on-site sensing and long-term tracking of β-galactosidase in ovarian cancer cells.

A super-contrast NIR-II fluorophore IR-BEMC6P with enhanced quantum yield is developed and the excretion mechanism is identified.

A novel cell membrane-anchored probe (ANRP) was constructed to monitor CO release from living cells for the first time.

This article presents the first work to fundamentally study the effect of steric hindrance in Pdot systems.