Utilization of a fluorescent i-motif DNA silver nanocluster sensor for visualizing endogenous reactive oxygen species in plant cells

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) play a key role in plant growth, defense mechanisms, and stress responses, making them essential for enhancing crop resilience.Various methods for detecting ROS in plants have been developed for both in vitro and in vivo applications.However, each technique has its own strengths and limitations, creating a need for a simple and eficient system to monitor ROS in plants.Here, we introduce DNA silver nanocluster (DNA/AgNCs) sensors designed to visualize ROS in plants.These sensors, C20/AgNCs and FAM-C20/AgNCs-Cy5, are capable of detecting intracellular ROS accumulation triggered by stimuli such as abscisic acid, salicylic acid, ethylene, and the bacterial peptide elicitor lg22.Notably, FAM-C20/AgNCs-Cy5 was compared with HyPer7, a well-known ROS sensor, in terms of sensing capabilities.Overall, we propose that the luorescent i-motif DNA/AgNCs system is a powerful tool for visualizing ROS signals in plant cells, offering signiicant insights into ROS-related processes in plant biology.