Fluorescent turn-on sensing of bacterial lipopolysaccharide in artificial urine sample with sensitivity down to nanomolar by tetraphenylethylene based aggregation induced emission molecule

A tetraphenylethylene based aggregation induced emission (AIE) probe, TPEPyE, bearing a positively charged pyridinium pendant was designed and synthesized. The positively charged TPEPyE can efficiently bind to the negatively charged lipopolysaccharide (LPS) through electrostatic interactions between the two oppositely charged species. As a result, upon the addition of LPS into the PBS solution of TPEPyE, this probe aggregated immediately onto the surface of LPS and resulted over 22-fold of fluorescence enhancement. TPEPyE exhibited good selectivity and high sensitivity toward LPS in PBS buffer solution and the detection limit was calculated to be 370 pM (3.7 ng/mL). More notably, TPEPyE also retained good sensitivity and selectivity in artificial urine system (with much higher ionic strength) with the detection limit down to nanomolar. Moreover, this probe can also make a distinction between gram-positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) and gram-negative bacteria Escherichia coli (E. coli), making it a promising sensor for clinical monitoring of urinary tract infections.