This thesis advances the long-standing challenge of measuring oxidative stress and deciphering
its underlying mechanisms and also outlines the advantages and limitations of existing design
strategies. It presents a range of approaches for the chemical synthesis of fluorescent probes
that detect reversible changes in cellular oxidative stress. The ability to visualise cellular
processes in real-time is crucial to understanding disease development and streamline treatment
and this can be achieved using fluorescent tools that can sense reversible disturbances in
cellular environments during pathogenesis. The perturbations in cellular redox state are of
particular current interest in medical research since oxidative stress is implicated in the
pathogenesis of a number of diseases.The book investigates different strategies used to achieve
ratiometric fluorescence output of the reversible redox probes which nullify concentration
effects associated with intensity-based probes. It also describes suitable approaches to target
these probes to specific cellular organelles thereby enabling medical researchers to visualise
sub-cellular oxidative stress levels and addressing the typically poor uptake of chemical
tools into biological studies.In total it reports on four new probes that are now being used by
over twenty research groups around the globe and two of which have been commercialised. The
final chapters of this thesis demonstrate successful applications of the sensors in a variety
of biological systems ranging from prokaryotes to mammalian cells and whole organisms. The
results described clearly indicate the immense value of collaborative cross-disciplinary
research.
