Fluorescent probes are extremely useful in elucidating biochemical mechanisms and processes inside of living cells via fluorescent microscopy. Fluorescent sensors are also being employed in medical diagnostics as a simple and convenient method to quantify important analytes in serum, for example. It is well known that many lipids and lipid-containing compounds possess significant biological activity. Lipids are amphiphilic molecules, thus receptors and sensors for these analytes must also be amphiphilic making them difficult to prepare. In this work, a multi-component supramolecular system is described which can recognize both the head-group and the hydrophobic portion of a lipid. A hydrophilic receptor for the lipid head-group is paired with a cucurbituril as the hydrophobic cavity for the lipid tail. Displacement of a dye provides a strong fluorescence response to the presence of the lipid.

Lipid detection by a multi-component fluorescent sensor system

256th National Meeting (2018)

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