Coupling Activity‐Based Detection, Target Amplification, Colorimetric and Fluorometric Signal Amplification, for Quantitative Chemosensing of Fluoride Generated from Nerve Agents

Abstract

The G‐class nerve agents, which include sarin, soman, and cyclosarin, react readily with nucleophilic reagents to produce fluoride. Thus, a chemosensing protocol has been designed for these agents that pairs the nucleophilic reactivity of oximates for generating fluoride with an autoinductive target amplification reaction to amplify the quantity of fluoride for facile colorimetric and fluorescent optical quantification. The chemosensing protocol was demonstrated by using the nerve agent surrogate diisopropyl fluorophosphate (DFP) and benzaldoxime as the nucleophile. Autoinductive fluoride amplification responds to fluoride released from DFP by amplifying the fluoride concentration and a yellow reporter molecule. The reporter is a conjugated oligomer with a nominal repeating unit that originates from 4‐aminobenzaldehyde. Exposure of the amplified fluoride to a fluoride‐specific ratiometric fluorescent reporter provides a fluorescent readout, in which three fluorophores are generated per fluoride. Both colorimetric and fluorescent readouts enable quantitative assays with low micromolar limits of detection for fluoride resulting from DFP. More importantly, this work demonstrates the successful merging of multiple complex reactions for achieving selective, sensitive, and quantitative chemosensing.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Feb 15, 2017
Source ID
10.1002/chem.201604474

Entities

People

  • Eric Anslyn
  • James F Reuther
  • Scott T. Phillips
  • Xiaolong Sun

Organizations

  • Defense Threat Reduction Agency
  • Pennsylvania State University
  • Robert A. Welch Foundation
  • University of Texas at Austin

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Chemistry

Readers

  • Analytical Chemistry
  • Molecular Genetics
  • Neurotoxicology