A Quinoline-Appended Cyclodextrin Derivative as a Highly Selective Receptor and Colorimetric Probe for Nucleotides

The design and development of specific recognition and sensing systems for biologically important anionic species has received growing attention in recent years, as they play significant roles in biology, pharmacy, and environmental sciences. Herein, a new supramolecular sensing probe L1 was developed for highly selective differentiation of nucleotides. L1 displayed extremely marked absorption and emission differentiation upon binding with nucleotide homologs of AMP, ADP, and ATP, due to the divergent spatial orientations of guests upon binding, which allowed for a naked-eye colorimetric differentiation for nucleotides. A differentiating mechanism was unambiguously rationalized by using various spectroscopic studies and theoretical calculations. Furthermore, we successfully demonstrated that L1 can be applied to the real-time monitoring of the enzyme-catalyzed phosphorylation/dephosphorylation processes and thus demonstrated an unprecedented visualizable strategy for selectively differentiating the structurally similar nucleotides and real-time monitoring of biological processes via fluorescent and colorimetric changes.