Photopharmacological ligands provide a powerful way for optical control of the activity of a molecule, which will facilitate better understanding of toxicological mechanism. By blending of photoswitchable azobenzene or dithienylethene with a nAChR agonist imidacloprid or a GABAR antagonist fipronil, we prepared series of photochromic ligands (PCLs) acting on insect nAChRs or GABAR. Some PCLs showed different insecticidal activity before and after light irradiation. These PCLs were then used to optically control over the insect nAChRs, cockroach dorsal unpaired median neuron and insect behavioral responses of mosquito larvae (Aedes albopictus) and cockroach (Periplaneta americana). Unprecedentedly, photoswitchable imidacloprid-dithienylethene can also be used as an indicator for fluorescent polarization (FP) based high-throughput ligands screening.

Xusheng Shao received his Ph.D. degree in Applied Chemistry from East China University of Science and Technology in 2009. He spent one year at University of California, Berkeley from 2012 to 2013. Currently, he is a professor of ECUST. His research interest focuses on green pesticides and photochemistry-based pesticides. He published more than 80 papers and one of the inventors of insecticides Paichongding and Cycloxaprid. He was supported by National Key R&D Program of China, Natural Science Foundation of China and Ten-thousand Talents Program-Youth talent. He is the youth editorial member of Chinese Chemical Letters and the member of American Chemical Society.