A multi-responsive coumarin–benzothiazole fluorescent probe for selective detection of biological thiols and hydrazine

Abstract Biothiols play important roles in various physiological and biological processes, which closely related to many diseases. Hydrazine is widely used in the chemical industry, but it is harmful to humans and animals. Therefore, it is very important to develop a fluorescent probe that can simultaneously detect biological thiols and hydrazine. In this work, a new fluorescent probe (2E,4Z)-2-(benzo[d]thiazol-2-yl)-5-chloro-5-(7-(diethylamino)-2-oxo-2H-chromen-3-yl)penta-2,4-dienenitrile (BCD) was synthesized by integrating coumarin and benzothiazole acetonitrile. Featured with four binding sites and different bonding mechanism between probe with biothiols and hydrazine, this probe exhibited fluorescent turn-on for distinguishing Cys, Hcy, GSH and hydrazine with 760-, 8-, 6- and 637-fold fluorescent intensity increase at 502, 479, 476 and 458 nm, respectively, through different excitation wavelengths. Research on the effect of pH on the fluorescent performance of BCD shows that the probe exhibits superior stability in a weakly alkaline to weakly acidic environment, which will facilitate the detection of biological thiols or hydrazine hydrate by BCD. Selectivity studies have shown that the probe has high specificity to biological thiols and hydrazine, which is of great significance to the application of BCD.