Amino acid detection using fluoroquinolone–Cu2+ complex as a switch-on fluorescent probe by competitive complexation without derivatization

In this work, we describe the use of fluoroquinolone–Cu2+ complex as a competitive switch-on fluorescence probe for amino acid determination without derivatization. The fluorescence intensity of this probe, which has been reduced due to effective quenching by Cu2+ ion, increases drastically by an addition of amino acid (glycine, phenylalanine, sarcosine, aspargine, alanine, proline, arginine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, lysine, leucine and isoleucine). The overall stability constants of Cu2+ ion complexes with amino acids were determined by fluorometric titration of fluoroquinolone-Cu2+ complex with the amino acid solution. Furthermore, the probe shows high calibration sensitivity toward aspartic acid. The fluorescence signal depends linearly on the amino acid concentration within the range of concentration from 1.2×10−7 to 1.1×10−5 mol L−1 for aspartic acid. The detection limit was found 2.7×10−8 mol L−1 with the relative standard deviation (RSD%) about 2.1% (five replicate).