The development of emissive optical probes has been gaining importance due to its application in tracking the biological events inside the cells. The optical probes reported so far are organic fluorophores, recombinant proteins, quantum dots and transition metal complexes. Except acridine orange (AO), which display dual staining ability (i.e. green and red fluorescence), most of the commercially available dyes used in cell staining exhibit a single color, either red or green in confocal microscopy. We have studied terpyridine based ligand Itpy and its Zn(II) complexes namely [Zn(Itpy)Cl]Cl (1 ) and [Zn(Itpy)2]Cl2 (2 ) for its application towards nuclear staining ability.  [Zn(itpy)2]2+ exhibits strong red and green emission in confocal microscopy compared to its analogue [Zn(itpy)Cl]+ which displays only red emission similar to control propidium iodide (PI). Further, these two Zn(II) complexes have been explored as probes in cell cycle analysis.

Zinc (II) terpyridine complexes as staining probes for microscopic analysis

246th National Meeting (2013)

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