A conjugated polymer (P1) containing porphyrin, fluorene and phenylene moieties in the main chain and and mannose in the side chainshas been synthesized.
Addition of Con A resulted in the quenching of the poly(fluorene–phenylene) emission at 456 nm with simultaneous enhancement of porphyrin emission at 625 nm, exhibiting visual emission color change of P1 from blue to purple.
This FRET probe could be used to quantify Con A, providing a low LOD (6 × 10−12 M).
P1 was insensitive to nonspecific proteins and all of the anions.