Protein-mediated fluorescent probes for bioimaging and biosensing: From fundamentals to applications

In recent years, with the rise of precision therapy and other frontier fields, the demand of the high quality fluorescent probes with extremely low toxicity, good biocompatibility, strong stability and high brightness is more urgent than ever. Proteins that with abundant active groups and special pockets can bind with different probes to alter the fluoresce properties, and some can even greatly enhance the fluorescence signals. Moreover, some proteins can simultaneously bind with two different molecules to fabricate fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) probes. Recent progress witnessed that the protein-mediated strategies have provided a promising way for enhancing the performance of fluorescent probe. This article will review the up-to-date progress of protein-mediated fluorescent probes. We firstly provide a systemically summary on the principle of protein fluorescent probes fabrication and the interaction mechanisms between proteins and molecular dyes. Then the bioapplications of these fluorescent probes in bioimaging and biosensing were reviewed. And finally the current challenges and perspectives were discussed in-depth. We hope that this review can provide some new ideas and inspiration for relevant researchers to develop a new generation of fluorescent probes.