Coumarin derivatives, fluorescent molecules

Antibodies labeled with fluorescent molecules have several applications, particularly in cytochemistry and cell sorting. There are many fluorochromes used in labeling (1), such as coumarin derivatives, phycobiliproteins, and rare earth chelates however, fluorescein and rhodamine (Table 1) are the most commonly used. 

Abstract Construction of chemical libraries is a useful approach to the discovery of better fluorescent materials, and several types, such as styryl dyes and cyanine dyes, have been reported. In this chapter, we focus on construction of a library of chemicals having a coumarin skeleton as the core structure. Coumarin and its derivatives are key structures in various bioactive or fluorescent molecules, and their fluorescence properties are dependent on the precise structure, including the positions of substituents. 

Many chemical compounds have been described in the Hterature as fluorescent, and since the 1950s intensive research has yielded many fluorescent compounds that provide a suitable whitening effect however, only a small number of these compounds have found practical uses. Collectively these materials are aromatic or heterocycHc compounds many of them contain condensed ring systems. An important feature of these compounds is the presence of an unintermpted chain of conjugated double bonds, the number of which is dependent on substituents as well as the planarity of the fluorescent part of the molecule. Almost all of these compounds ate derivatives of stilbene [588-59-0] or 4,4 -diaminostilbene biphenyl 5-membeted heterocycles such as triazoles, oxazoles, imidazoles, etc or 6-membeted heterocycles, eg, coumarins, naphthaUmide, t-triazine, etc. 

In addition to minimal perturbation of the original polymer structure, the polymer-fluorochrome bond must be stable and the labelled polymer should have favorable spectral properties. The highly fluorescent derivatives of fluorescein (la), rhodamine (Ila) and coumarin (Ilia) have been studied in detail for analytical purposes in biological material (Fig. 1). Attachment of these substances to a polymer molecule by a co-... 

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