A sensitive and selective detection method for thiol compounds using novel fluorescence probe

• A sensitive and selective detection method for thiol compounds using novel fluorescent probe was developed.
• The fluorescence quenching of the synthesized probe was based on the fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) effect.
• The synthesized probe containing a disulfide bond which can selectively react with thiol compounds by the thiol-disulfide exchange reaction.
• This method was successfully utilized to analyze Cys in the compound amino acid injection.

In this work, a sensitive and selective detection method based on fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) was developed for analyzing thiol compounds by using a novel fluorescent probe. The new fluorescent probe contains a disulfide bond which selectively reacts with nucleophilic thiolate through the thiol-disulfide exchange reaction. An obvious fluorescence recovery can be observed upon addition of the thiol compound in the fluorescent probe solution due to the thiol-disulfide exchange reaction and the destruction of FRET. This novel probe was successfully used to determine dithiothreitol (DTT), glutathione (GSH) and cysteine (Cys). The limits of detection (LOD) were 2.0 μM for DTT, 0.6 μM for GSH, and 0.8 μM for Cys. This new detection method was further investigated in the analysis of compound amino acid injection.

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