A colorimetric and fluorometric molecular system for discriminative detection of palladium acetate and CO cell imaging

A novel fluorophore (NAP-PMA) has been constructed through appending 2-pyridinemethanamine to naph-thalimide. The air and moisture stable fluorophore were adopted as a colorimetric and fluorometric probe for palladium cation, revealing simultaneously good selectivity, high sensitivity and low detection limit (22.5 nM). Moreover, NAP-PMA not only exhibited a visible naked-eye color change from yellowish green to pink, but also displayed highly selective recognition to palladium acetate. In addition, NAP-PMA could be used as paper strips to quantitatively detect Pd2+ in water. Surprisingly, the developed sensing platform NAP-PMA-Pd is capable of detecting CO in living cells by "turn on" mode with high selectivity and stability, providing a potential real-time monitor for CO-involved reactions in biological systems.