Fluorescent imaging of redox species in multicellular organisms

Abstract

Redox processes play a crucial role in many aspects of physiology and changes in cellular redox species are increasingly being linked to a wide range of pathological conditions. Redox species can change dynamically at the subcellular compartment-, cell- and tissue-level and different redox species likely convey different biological information. The investigation of redox biology in a living multicellular organism is particularly difficult and is hampered by the lack of tools which offer redox species specificity and the necessary spatial and temporal resolution. In recent years there has been intense development of small organic chemical and genetically encoded fluorescent probes which have vastly improved our ability to investigate cellular redox processes. In this chapter we describe the currently available fluorescent probes, focusing in particular on those which have already been applied to multicellular organisms or those which we believe have the potential for in vivo use in the future. We discuss advantages and disadvantages of the different kinds of probes and highlight their major problems and limitations.