Recent advance in dual-functional luminescent probes for reactive species and common biological ions

The chemical microenvironment in cells is extremely complex involving numerous species with drastically different concentration as well as temporal and spatial distribution. Especially, reactive species including ROS, RNS, RSS, and many inorganic ions are recognized to play very important roles. The concentrations of these species are constantly regulated and often depend on each other. While fluorescent probes have been widely used to study various cell biological processes, those simultaneously probing two species just emerged recently. In this review, we highlight dual-functional luminescent probes for the detection and fluorescence imaging of two and more analytes in cells. The content will cover small-molecule synthetic fluorescent probes, DNA nanoassemblies, and nanoparticle-based nanoprobes. The target analytes include reactive species such as ROS, RNS, and RSS and other ions and molecules such as H+, Cl-, Ca2+, Cu2+, and O-2.