Exploring Multifaceted Roles of Nitroreductases in Bacterial, Animal and Plant Biosystems and their Detection using Fluorescent Probes

Abstract Nitroreductases are the enzymes that can convert nitroaromatic substances including explosives like TNT to their corresponding nitrite, hydroxylamine or amino derivatives with reduced NADH or NADPH as an electron donor. A wide range of nitroreductases are known to present in bacterial genomes that are explored for their potential in the reduction of nitroaromatic compounds and they are used in converting prodrugs to toxic hydroxylamine derivatives causing tumor cell killing. Likewise, in cancer cells, the low oxygen condition called hypoxia is a characteristic of solid tumors and during hypoxia nitroreductase gene expression occurs. Moreover, due to the ability of nitroreductases to reduce nitroaromatic compounds, phytoremediation potential of plants was inspected by expressing bacterial nitroreductase genes in plants through genetic engineering. Due to its diversity and widespread applications in different biosystems, its detection has gained momentum among the scientific community. Designing fluorescent probes for detecting nitroreductases has emerged as a beneficial tool compared to conventional monitoring approaches due to their high sensitivity, selectivity, and real‐time monitoring ability. This review aims to provide an understanding of the activity and the status of nitroreductases in bacteria, plants and animal cells as well as the significance of fluorescent imaging‐related studies by employing recently designed probes.