pH-Responsive chromogenic-sensing molecule based on bis(indolyl)methene for the highly selective recognition of aspartate and glutamate

• Litao Wang,
• Xiaoming He,
• Yong Guo,
• Jian Xu and
• Shijun Shao

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2011, 7, 218–221, doi:10.3762/bjoc.7.29

• Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, P. R. China 10.3762/bjoc.7.29 Abstract Bis(indolyl)methene displays high selectivity and sensitivity for aspartate and glutamate in water-containing medium based on the proton transfer signaling mode. The presence of acid can easily induce proton transfer to the basic

• H-bond acceptor moiety, which modulates the internal charge transfer state of the bis(indolyl)methene skeleton and gives rise to dramatic change in color. The detection limits for aspartate and glutamate were 0.80 ppm and 1.12 ppm, respectively. Keywords: aspartate and glutamate; bis(indolyl

• shown that aspartate (Asp) and glutamate (Glu) are important neurotransmitters [9][10][11], thus the recognition or sensing of these amino acids by synthetic receptor molecules is of great interest [12][13][14]. The bis(indolyl)methene molecule 1 (Figure 1), possessing an acidic H-bond donor moiety and