Chiral Zinc Complexes Used as Fluorescent Sensor for Natural Amino Acids

Abstract Metal complexes have been used as “enzyme mimics” to sense many biologically relevant molecules. Herein, a pair of chiral mononuclear zinc complexes have been used as biomimetic models to sense natural amino acids. These chiral zinc complexes were easy to prepare and the ligands were derived from the cheap and readily available natural chiral lactic acids. They exhibited the ability to distinguish Cys (cysteine) and His (histidine) from other natural amino acids at the same time in aqueous solution. Moreover, they also performed effectively enantioselective discrimination for enantiomers of Leu, Met, Val and Phe in acetonitrile.