Development of Anion Responsive Metal Complexes for use in Live Cell Imaging

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Imaging of the brain using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has revolutionised our understanding of the brain's operational complexity. However, due to the intrinsic insensitivity of MR Imaging compared to optical imaging, it is still very difficult to visualise chemical events at the cell level. We will tackle this problem by creating a series of luminescent metal complexes tuned to detecting certain bioactive anions, thereby allowing real-time visualisation of metabolic events in nerve cells using high-resolution fluorescence microscopy. Such probes will be designed to respond to changes in their biochemical environment upon neural activation. Crucially, they will detect changes in their surroundings non-invasively and will be applied in situ to study living cell-circuits, developed in a collaborative PhD project within the department of Chemistry.