Guidelines in implementing enantioselective indicator-displacement assays for alpha-hydroxycarboxylates and diols.

Enantioselective association events between boronic acid receptors and bifunctional substrates such as alpha-hydroxycarboxylates and vicinal diols were exploited to develop enantioselective indicator-displacement assays. It was found that the sensitivity of the assay could be tuned by using either colorimetric or fluorescent indicators. Mathematical principles were established for concurrent determination of concentration and enantiomeric excess (ee) of a chiral analyte, which has been a challenge to the high-throughput analysis of chiral samples. Furthermore, experimental protocols were optimized to maximize the chiral resolution of the assay and to improve the accuracy of the ee measurements.