Saccharide-selective boronic acid based Photoinduced Electron Transfer (PET) fluorescent sensors

The ability to monitor the presence of analytes within physiological, environmental and industrial systems is of crucial importance. However, due to the scale at which recognition events occur on the molecular level, gathering this information poses a non-trivial challenge. Therefore, robust chemical molecular sensors with the capacity to detect chosen molecules selectively and to signal this presence have attracted considerable attention over recent years. Of particular interest is the real-time monitoring of saccharides in aqueous systems, such as D-glucose in blood. To this end the covalent pair-wise interaction between boronic acids and saccharides has been exploited.