A novel design of multiple ligands for ultrasensitive colorimetric chemosensor of glutathione in plasma sample

Abstract

In this study, we developed a novel colorimetric chemosensor for selective and sensitive recognition of Glutathione (GSH) using a simple binary mixture of commercially accessible and inexpensive metal receptors with names, Bromo Pyrogallol Red (BPR) and Xylenol Orange (XO). This procedure is based on the synergistic coordination of BPR and XO with cerium ion (Ce3+) for the recognition of GSH over other available competitive amino acids (AAs) especially thiol species in aqueous media. Generally, cysteine (Cys) and homocysteine (hCys) can seriously interfere with the detection of GSH among common biological species because they possess similar chemical behavior. Using all the information from 1HNMR and FT-IR studies, the proposed interaction is presented in which GSH acts as a tri-dentate ligand with three N donor atoms in conjunction with BPR and XO as mono and bi-dentate ligands respectively. This approach opens a path for selective detection of other AAs by argumentatively selecting the ensemble of mixed organic ligands from commercially available reagents, thereby eliminating the need for developing synthetic receptors, sample preparation, organic solvent mixtures, and expensive equipment. Evaluating the feasibility of the existing method was led to the determination of GSH in human plasma samples.