Lighting up nitric oxide with a little bit of copper
Lynn M. Savage
Nitric oxide, an antioxidant primarily
known for its role as a messenger in cellular signaling events, also is generated
by cells to accomplish a variety of other tasks. Macrophages, for example, create
it to eliminate bacteria and other foreign particles that they encounter.
Biologists who study the effects of nitric oxide
on living tissues are interested in clearly identifying the presence of the molecule
within cells. However, current imaging methods, including chemiluminescence, electron
paramagnetic resonance spectrometry and amperometry, have low spatial resolution
and often are costly. Fluorescence microscopy can image nitric oxide in biological
contexts with suitable spatiotemporal resolution; however, commonly used fluorescent
nitric oxide sensors are unable to monitor the molecule directly.
For several years, Stephen J. Lippard
and his colleagues at MIT in Cambridge, Mass., have attempted to find a way to trigger
fluorescence directly in the presence of nitric oxide. Using a variety of metal
ions — such as iron, ruthenium, cobalt and rhodium — in combination
with a metal-bound fluorophore, they found that some metal-based compounds could
elicit fluorescence in the presence of nitric oxide, but also in the presence of
other substances, even water.
Now the group has developed a fluorescent
probe — made with copper — that directly and rapidly reacts with nitric
oxide, enabling imaging of the molecule in living cells. The researchers —
Lippard, Mi Hee Lim and Dong Xu — report their findings in the July issue
of
Nature Chemical Biology.
They created the probe by combining
a fluorescein-based ligand with CuCl2. In the resulting complex, the fluorescence
of the modified fluorescein was quenched. But when nitric oxide was introduced,
the compound immediately exhibited an approximately elevenfold increase in fluorescence.
The researchers have not measured the precise speed of the reaction yet but, according
to Lippard, it is in the range of milliseconds. They recorded the fluorescence emissions
with spectrophotometers from Hitachi High Technologies Corp. of Tokyo and from Photon
Technology International Inc. of Birmingham, N.J., finding that the maximum emission
was ~530 nm.
Importantly, introducing nitric oxide
to a copper-free version of the fluorescein ligand resulted in only an ~1.5-fold
increase in fluorescence, indicating that the copper is indispensable for fluorescence
enhancement.
The fluorescence occurs because the
nitric oxide triggers a reduction of the Cu(II) to Cu(I), which forms NO+. Subsequently,
the NO+ reacts with the fluorescein-ligand compound, dissociating the copper from
the compound and turning on the fluorescence of the fluorescein. “We were
concerned that the resulting nitrosated molecules might be toxic,” Lippard
said, “but that turned out not to be the case for the cells we examined, at
least under our conditions.”
The scientists determined that the
technique provides a detection limit of 5 nM for nitric oxide. According to Lippard,
the group would like to improve upon that, although no one knows exactly what the
ultimate limit should be.
To test the viability of copper-fluorescein
complexes for imaging nitric oxide in living cells, the investigators imaged human
neuroblastoma cells, using both the copper-based construct and commercially available
o-diaminofluorescein diacetate (DAF-2 DA), which typically reacts solely
with the oxidation products of nitric oxide. In neuroblastoma cells, nitric oxide
is produced by constitutive nitric oxide synthase (cNOS) that is activated by a
common calcium-based cell-signaling sequence that begins with the introduction of
estrogen.
Imaging the cells with inverted microscopes
from Nikon and from Zeiss, they found that the copper-fluorescein compound induced
a nitric-oxide-dependent fluorescence enhancement of about fourfold within the five
minutes required to bring the cells from the tissue culture room to the microscope
(Figure 1). Conversely, when DAF-2 DA was used in the same estrogen-treated cells,
there was an ~1.8-fold increase in fluorescence after 30 minutes.
Figure 1. Using a novel complex of copper and a metal-bound fluorescein,
researchers have imaged nitric oxide produced in neuroblastoma cells via the introduction
of estrogen. At t = 0 (top row), the copper-fluorescein particles are present, but
not estrogen. Five minutes after introduction of estrogen, fluorescence increased
fourfold (second row). The third and fourth rows represent t = 10 min and t = 15
min, respectively. Images courtesy Stephen J. Lippard and Mi Hee Lim.
Just as cNOS originates nitric oxide
in neuroblastoma, inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) produces nitric oxide inside
macrophages. And, as with neuroblastoma cells, the researchers found that the copper-fluorescein
compound could monitor the expected slow increase in fluorescence over a span of
12 hours in almost every region of the macrophages following treatment with lipopolysaccharide
and interferonγ.
They also mixed neuroblastoma and macrophage
cells in the same culture dish, finding that, by adding estrogen, they could use
the sensor to preferentially detect fluorescence in the nitric oxide produced by
the neuroblastoma’s cNOS (Figure 2). The scientists believe that this technique
could be useful for providing information about which cells produce nitric oxide
within heterogeneous tissue samples as well as for determining the timing and placement
of intracellular events involving nitric oxide.
Further tests indicated that the copper-fluorescein
compound is not toxic to either the neuroblastoma or the macrophage cells, and
Lippard’s group has arranged with a chemical company to produce an assay kit
based on the technique.
Figure 2. Mixing neuroblastoma and macrophage cells in the same culture
dish, the investigators found that they could use the copper-based sensor to preferentially
detect fluorescence in the nitric oxide produced by the neuroblastoma.
The researchers are already planning
improvements on the compound.
“It is not reversible,”
Lippard said, “and it is not trappable.” Trappability — the ability
to keep the copper-fluorescein particles inside the cells — would be useful
for live-cell studies of nitric oxide and cell signaling processes in which the
samples must be consistently presented with nutrients that could wash the fluorescent
compound away.
They also are working toward a version
of the compound that can be activated by wavelengths in the near-infrared range,
which can penetrate skin tissue better than the 530-nm wavelength used experimentally.
“Wavelengths greater than 700 nm might allow us to image what nitric oxide
is doing in vivo,” Lippard said.
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