United States: Scientists have synthesized new style of fluorescent probe which accurately measure serotonin concentration, an important element in depression diagnosis and treatment.
This probe enables diss-Bar Serotonin from other similar molecules and reveals details of the entry of Serotonin in cells, which gives new understanding about instrument causing depression.
Serotonin Imaging
As reported by SciTechDaily, Serotonin is therefore of great significance in diagnosis of depression, its treatment and discovery of drugs to treat the condition. Chinese scientists have now developed a novel and highly sensitive and selective fluorescent probe for imaging serotonin. Their initial studies reported in the Angewandte Chemie also encompass experimental data obtained in cell cultures and animal tests.
Depression is actually among the biggest challenges to public health in the world currently. Current treatments may not meet expectations, mostly because there is little understood about depression itself. A new scientific evaluation implies that depressive disorders are not confined to a simple low in serotonin production.
Progress made in Fluorescent probing of serotonin
In order to study the concentration of serotonin in depressives, a team headed by Dr Weiying Lin at Guangxi University (China) designed to synthesise a highly selective molecular fluorescent probe. The issue with this is that serotonin is chemically and structurally similar to other biomolecules such as melatonin and tryptophan.
Yet there are studies that provide necessary and sufficient distinctions of reactivity where change is apparent. The team made a special reactive group (3-mercaptopropionate) which selectively reacts with serotonin through a coupling reaction. They connected this reactive building block to a fluorescent dye (dicyanomethylene-benzopyran derivative).
The Reaction Mechanism of a New Serotonin Probe
Dev-neural attachment of the ‘appendage’ masks the probe initially by switching off the latter. What happens if it meets serotonin, one of the sections reacts firstly (SH group of the reactive building block reacts with a double bond in serotonin, thiol-ene click chemistry). Later on, due to spatial nearness, a second interaction is established (covalent interaction between the amino group of serotonin and the carbonyl group of the reactive coupling partner).
As result the building block is removed from the fluorescent group in the reactive building block and as a result, the building block is removed from the fluorescent dye an its fluorescence is switched on and the probe selectively and sensitively indicates the presence of the serotonin even inside the cells.
Observations From the Cell and the Animals Models.
The Team also used the probe image a cell line that can be made into a model for the depression by the administration of the corticosterone and it turned out that the serotonin level in the normal and the depressed cells was nearly equally high and however the depressive cells were able to expel very majorly less serotonin in the response to the stimulation and the