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Biological Applications of a Strongly Luminescent Platinum (II) Complex in Reactive Oxygen Species Scavenging and Hypoxia Imaging in Caenorhabditis elegans

Phosphorescent transition metal complexes make up an important group of compounds that continues to attract intense research owing to their intrinsic bioimaging applications that arise from bright emissions, relatively long excited state lifetimes, and large stokes shifts. Now for biomaging assay a model organism is required which must meet certain criteria for practical applications. The organism needs to be small, with a high turn-over of progeny (high fecundity), a short lifecycle, and low maintenance and assay costs. Our model organism C. elegans met all the criteria. The ideal phosphor has low toxicity in the model organism. In this work the strongly phosphorescent platinum (II) pyrophosphito-complex was tested for biological applications as a potential in vivo hypoxia sensor. The suitability of the phosphor was derived from its water solubility, bright phosphorescence at room temperature, and long excited state lifetime (~ 10 µs). The applications branched off to include testing of C. elegans survival when treated with the phosphor, which included lifespan and fecundity assays, toxicity assays including the determination of the LC50, and recovery after paraquat poisoning. Quenching experiments were performed using some well knows oxygen derivatives, and the quenching mechanisms were derived from Stern-Volmer plots. Reaction stoichiometries were derived from Job plots, while percent scavenging (or antioxidant) activities were determined graphically. The high photochemical reactivity of the complex was clearly manifested in these reactions.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc822774
Date12 1900
CreatorsKinyanjui, Sophia Nduta
ContributorsOmary, Mohammad A., Padilla, Pamela Anne, Petros, Robby A., Cundari, Thomas R.
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formatxvii, 137 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), Text
RightsPublic, Kinyanjui, Sophia Nduta, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

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