Supramolecular Dye Aggregate Assembly Enables Ratiometric Detection and Discrimination of Lysine and Arginine in Aqueous Solution

[Image: see text] Constructing sensor systems for rapid and selective detection of small biomolecules such as amino acids is a major area of focus in bioanalytical chemistry. Considering the biological relevance of arginine and lysine, significant efforts have been directed to develop fluorescent sensors for their detection. However, these developed sensors suffer from certain disadvantages such as poor aqueous solubility, technically demanding and time-consuming synthetic protocols, and more importantly, most of them operate through single wavelength measurements, making their performance prone to small variations in experimental conditions. Herein, we report a ratiometric sensor that operates through lysine- and arginine-induced dissociation of a supramolecular assembly consisting of emissive H-aggregates of a molecular rotor dye, thioflavin-T (ThT), on the surface of a polyanionic supramolecular host, sulfated β-cyclodextrin. This disassembly brings out the modulation of monomer–aggregate equilibrium in the system which acts as an ideal scheme for the ratiometric detection of lysine and arginine in the aqueous solution. Besides facile framework of our sensor system, it employs a commercially available inexpensive probe molecule, ThT, which provides an added advantage over other sensor systems that employ synthetically demanding probe molecules. Importantly, the distinctive feature of the ratiometric detection of arginine and lysine provides an inherent advantage of increased accuracy in quantitative analysis. Interestingly, we have also demonstrated that arginine displays a multiwavelength distinctive recognition pattern which distinguishes it from lysine, using a single supramolecular ensemble. Furthermore, our sensor system also shows response in heterogeneous, biologically complex media of serum samples, thus extending its possible use in real-life applications.