The rational design of a Rhodamine fluorescent probe enables the selective detection and bioimaging of salicylic acid in plants under abiotic stress.

Abstract

Abiotic stress severely hinders plant growth and development, resulting in a considerable reduction in crop yields. Salicylic acid (SA) serves as a central signal mediating abiotic stress responses in plants. Real-time fluorescence tracking using specific probes can enhance our understanding of the SA-triggered modulation underlying these events. However, in complicated living plant microenvironments, selective recognition and bioimaging of SA is a great challenge for scientists due to the severe background interference and SA analogues. Herein, an efficient fluorescence probing technology employing a highly selective rhodamine probe-phoxrodam was developed, which realizes the precise bioimaging of SA in salt-stressed plant seedlings. Experimental findings reveal that phoxrodam demonstrates exceptional selectivity (fluorescence intensity: I Phoxrodam+SA /I Phoxrodam+SA analogues > 4.29-fold), high sensitivity (limit of detection = 6.42 nM, fluorescence quantum yield: Φ Phoxrodam+SA = 0.36) and good anti-interference properties. Furthermore, we confirmed that phoxrodam accurately detects SA in the roots of salt-stressed wheat seedlings, the low-temperature resistance of Nicotiana benthamiana and the heavy metal resistance of pea seeds, using in vivo confocal imaging. This study provides a feasible strategy for efficiently tracking plant signalling molecules and promotes the in-depth research of SA-mediated physiological mechanisms, laying a key foundation for the future development of new immune activation inducers.

Plant phenotyping relevance

植物体内のサリチル酸を選択的に可視化・定量する蛍光プローブ技術の開発が中心であり、植物の生理状態を取得する実質的なフェノタイピング手法に該当する。

Code and data availability

The article describes a rhodamine fluorescent probe (phoxrodam) for salicylic acid bioimaging in plants under abiotic stress. No public phenotype/trait datasets, plant image collections, author analysis code, trained models, or data availability statements with public URLs are present in the supplied blocks. The only D

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