The small molecule optical probes for gases with potential medical applications

Various gas molecules exist in the life systems. According to their functions, they can be divided into: signaling gas molecules (gasotransmitters) and non-signaling gas molecules. Similar to the gasotransmitters, the non-signaling gas molecules are of great potential and can be valuable in medical applications, such as serving as specific index for disease status and treating medical conditions. Since their distributions and concentrations are closely related to the health status, selective detection and imaging of these gas molecules is very important. Electrochemistry and mass spectroscopy are traditional methods to detect such gas molecules. However, these methods need expensive instruments and complicated data processing. Recently, optical probes have been emerged as important tools in detecting gas molecules with simple operations. The current review focuses on the recent development on the optical probes for the non-signaling gas molecules.