Chemical sensors are indispensable to modern civilization and constitute the enabling technology in medical diagnostics, food and air quality control, and the detection of chemical and biological warfare agents. Indicator displacement assays, in which a dye molecule is displaced from a receptor by a competitive analyte, are widely used as chemical sensors in biochemical systems due to their chief advantage of not requiring chemical modification (i.e., labeling) of the target analyte. The downside to current indicator displacement assays is their bimolecular nature--that is, the sensor is composed of a "reporter pair" comprising a receptor and dye as separate molecules. Therefore, the sensor is only operable under working conditions in which the dye can bind appreciably to the receptor, which is at concentrations above the equilibrium dissociation constant of the dye. This presentation will describe our latest efforts to overcome these issues, including the design and synthesis of a novel sensor and the characterization of its photophysical, analyte-binding, toxicity, and cell permeability properties.

Fluorescent cucurbituril

251st National Meeting (2016)

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