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Ferroptosis has been confirmed as a potential mediator and an indicator of the severity of liver injury. Despite the fruitful results, there are still two deficiencies in the research on the association between ferroptosis and liver injury. First, iron ions are usually selected as the target bioanalyte, but its detection based on a fluorescent probe is interfered with by specific chemical reaction mechanisms, leading to low sensitivity and poor physiological stability. Second, more efforts were focused on the harmful effects of ferroptosis on liver injury and less involved in the therapeutic value of ferroptosis for liver injury. Hence, in this work, we proposed a new nonreactive analyte (mitochondrial viscosity) as an analysis marker, which can circumvent the challenges caused by specific reaction mechanisms of iron ions. Meanwhile, we constructed a novel label-detection integrated visual probe ( VPF ) to explore the feasibility of ferroptosis in the treatment of liver injury. As expected, we not only successfully traced the dynamic changes in mitochondrial viscosity but also visualized the changes in cell morphology during induced and inhibited ferroptosis. Conspicuously, this work revealed that liver injury can be alleviated by regulating ferroptosis, confirming the therapeutic value of ferroptosis in liver injury. In addition, a complex biological communication network between ferroptosis and liver injury was constructed by western blotting, providing an important theoretical mechanism for revealing their double-edged sword relationship. This study not only provides a new strategy for studying the complex relationship between ferroptosis and liver injury but also facilitates the future treatment of liver injury.
Yin et al. (2023) studied this question.