Metabolically Specific In Situ Fluorescent Visualization of Bacterial Infection on Wound Tissues

• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c10115
• Publication Date: 2022-08-25T12:26:40Z
• Authors: Chen-Jian Zhong; Xi-Le Hu; Xiao-Lan Yang; Hui-Qi Gan; Kai-Cheng Yan; Fu-Ting Shu; Pei Wei; Teng Gong; Peng-Fei Luo; Tony D. James; Zhao-Hong Chen; Yong-Jun Zheng; Xiao-Peng He; Zhao-Fan Xia
• Keywords: Microbial Metabolism; DHPS

The ability to effectively detect bacterial infection in human tissues is important for the timely treatment of infection. However, traditional techniques fail visualize species adhered host cells situ a target-specific manner. Dihydropteroate synthase (DHPS) exclusively exists and metabolically converts p-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) folic (FA). By targeting this bacterium-specific metabolism, we have developed fluorescent imaging probe, PABA-DCM, based on conjugation PABA with long-wavelength fluorophore, dicyanomethylene 4H-pyran (DCM). We confirmed that probe can be used synthetic pathway broad spectrum Gram-positive negative bacteria, resulting significantly extended retention time over mammalian cells. validated DHPS catalytically introduces dihydropteridine group amino end motif adduct leads an increase FA levels bacteria. also constructed hydrogel dressing containing PABA-DCM graphene oxide (GO), termed PABA-DCM@GO, achieves fluorescence visualization wounded mice. Our research paves way development agents target species-conserved metabolic pathways microorganisms monitoring infections tissues.