Fluorescent probes for recognition of ATP

Adenosine 5'-triphosphate (ATP) not only participates in various physiological activities as the universal energy currency but also implicates in various pathological processes in living cells. Consequently, sensitive and selective detection ATP in live cells, tissues, as well as environmental samples, are urgently demanded. Due to the simple and convenient operation, economy cost, high selectivity for analyte, well biocompatibility and low cytotoxicity, fluorescent sensors for monitoring ATP have aroused great attention of researchers. In recent years, a large number of fluorescent sensors for detecting ATP have developed. This manuscript summarized most of these sensors and the interaction-mechanism between ATP and sensors, mainly including electrostatic interaction, π-π interaction, covalent bonding or hydrogen bond, or combinations of them, and the advantages of each strategy were also generalized. Here, a viewpoint of classification was shown where the sensors were divided into five typed ones according to the structure of probes used.