Design
of chemical probes with high specificity and responses are
particularly intriguing. In this work, a fluorescent probe (M–OH–SO
3
) with dual-channel
spectral responses toward human serum albumin (HSA) is presented.
By employing dinitrobenzenesulfonate as a recognition site as well
as a fluorescence quencher, probe M–OH–SO
3
displayed weak fluorescence, which, nevertheless,
exhibits extensive yellow (575 nm) and red (660 nm) fluorescence emissions
toward HSA under excitations at 400 and 500 nm, respectively. Interestingly, M–OH–SO
3
displayed the
best performance toward HSA with distinctly higher selectivity than
that of its counterparts M–SO
3
, M–H–SO
3
, and M–F–SO
3
,
which were prepared simply by modulating the functional group at the
ortho position of the dicyanoisophorone core. Molecular docking results
revealed that M–OH–SO
3
possesses the lowest binding energy among the tested derivatives
and accordingly the strongest binding affinity. Probe M–OH–SO
3
showed a good linear relationship toward
HSA in a range of 0.5–18 μM with a limit of detection
of 35 nM. Cell imaging results demonstrated that probe M–OH–SO
3
could visualize the variation HSA levels
in hepatocarcinoma cells. In addition, probe M–OH–SO
3
could also be employed for the recognition
of glutathione through the cleavage of the dinitrobenzenesulfonate
group along with an enhancement of emission at 575 nm. The site-dependent
properties inspired a novel paradigm for design of fluorescent probes
with optimized selectivity and responses.