{"doi":"10.1085/jgp.201912498","title":"Wheat germ agglutinin–conjugated fluorescent pH sensors for visualizing proton fluxes","abstract":"Small-molecule fluorescent wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) conjugates are routinely used to demarcate mammalian plasma membranes, because they bind to the cell's glycocalyx. Here, we describe the derivatization of WGA with a pH-sensitive rhodamine fluorophore (pHRho; pKa = 7) to detect proton channel fluxes and extracellular proton accumulation and depletion from primary cells. We found that WGA-pHRho labeling was uniform and did not appreciably alter the voltage gating of glycosylated ion channels, and the extracellular changes in pH correlated with proton channel activity. Using single-plane illumination techniques, WGA-pHRho was used to detect spatiotemporal differences in proton accumulation and depletion over the extracellular surface of cardiomyocytes, astrocytes, and neurons. Because WGA can be derivatized with any small-molecule fluorescent ion sensor, WGA conjugates should prove useful to visualize most electrogenic and nonelectrogenic events on the extracellular side of the plasma membrane.","journal":"The Journal of General Physiology","year":2020,"id":74546,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":9,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9569,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":390129,"name":"Mei Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-3292-5601","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":292015,"name":"Karl Bellvé","orcid":"0000-0003-3889-468X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":390130,"name":"Kevin E. Fogarty","orcid":"0000-0002-4651-3480","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":390131,"name":"Maite A. Castro","orcid":"0000-0003-2526-0485","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":390132,"name":"Sebastián Brauchi","orcid":"0000-0002-8494-9912","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":390133,"name":"William R. Kobertz","orcid":"0000-0003-3628-7974","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":390128,"name":"Lejie Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-1280-3519","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":29,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:46:11.663457Z","pmid":"31978216","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}