Applications of functional dyes in biomedicine and life sciences

Functional dyes are useful tool in Biomedical and Life Sciences. In chapter 2 and 3, we introduced a general and simple design concept using unnatural amino acids (UAAs) as flexible scaffold to link organic fluorophore covalently to a photostabilizer on an arbitrary biomolecular target using only NHS- or click chemistry. With this method, chemically distinct fluorophore species that could not be studied before can be improved through intramolecular photostabilization as “self-healing” fluorophores. . In chapter 4, we developed novel photoswitchable aminoglycosides, that we can call “Opto-Drugs”, which can resist aminoglycoside-modifying enzymes while simultaneously demonstrating selective antibiotic activities upon visible light light irradiation. In chapter 5, we generate an artificial photoresponsive system based on genetically encoded aptameric RNA that can respond to photoisomerizable, cell-permeable small molecules.