Facile Approach to Fabricate a Chemical Sensor Array Based on Nanocurcumin–Metal Ions Aggregates: Detection and Identification of DNA Nucleobases

[Image: see text] Here, a three-channel absorbance sensor array based on the nanocurcumin–metal ion (NCur–MI) aggregates is designed for the detection and identification of deoxyribonucleic acid nucleobases (DNA NBs) for the first time. For this purpose, the binding affinities of some of MIs (i.e., Co(2+), Cr(3+), Cu(2+), Fe(2+), Fe(3+), Hg(2+), Mn(2+), Ni(2+), V(3+), and Zn(2+)) to the NCur to induce the aggregation were evaluated under various experimental conditions. Further studies reveal that in the presence of DNA NBs, the aggregates of NCur–Co(2+), NCur–Ni(2+), and NCur–Zn(2+) show the diverse absorbance responses to the deaggregation of NCur depending on the binding affinity of each of DNA NBs to the metal ions Co(2+), Ni(2+), and Zn(2+). These responses are distinguishable from one another. Thus, clear differentiation among the DNA NBs is achieved by linear discriminant analysis and hierarchical clustering analysis to generate clustering maps. The discriminatory capacity of the sensor array for the identification of the DNA NBs is tested in the ranges of 2.4–16 and 5.6–10.4 μM. Furthermore, a mixed set of the DNA NBs was prepared for multivariate multicomponent analysis. Finally, the practicability of the sensor array is confirmed by the discrimination of the DNA NBs in an animal DNA sample. It should be noted that the proposed array is the first example to fabricate an NCur-based sensor array for the simultaneous detection of DNA NBs.