Vitamin B6 cofactors guided highly selective fluorescent turn-on sensing of histamine using beta-cyclodextrin stabilized ZnO quantum dots.

Histamine, one of the most important biogenic amines (BAs) is considered as food hazard and therefore various agencies have fixed threshold in different food and beverages. In this manuscript, two novel fluorescent turn-on probes were developed for the instantaneous detection of histamine. The β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) capped ZnO quantum dots (QDs) were decorated with the vitamin B6 cofactors like pyridoxal 5'-phosphate (PLP) and pyridoxal (Py) by forming host-guest inclusion complexation between the capped β-CD and PLP/Py. The cofactors decorated QDs (ZnO@PLP and ZnO@Py) were applied for the sensing of BAs. Addition of histamine to the ZnO@PLP and ZnO@Py solution resulted selective fluorescence enhancement at 473 nm and 460 nm, respectively. Without any interference from the other tested BAs, the fluorescence response of the probes ZnO@PLP and ZnO@Py showed good linearity to histidine concentration from 2.49 to 24.4 μM and 7.44 to 47.6 μM with the detection limit down to 0.59 μM and 0.97 μM, respectively.