A novel fluorometric turn-on assay for lipase activity based on an aggregation-induced emission (AIE) luminogen

Abstract Lipase plays critical roles in the industrial catalysis, drug discovery and medical diagnosis of diseases. In this paper, based on the consideration that a tetraphenylethylene (TPE) derivative P1 with a −COOC 6 H 13 group can be hydrolyzed into TPE-COOH which shows low solubility in same solutions and thus aggregation can occur easily, a novel fluorescence turn-on probe bearing aggregation-induced emission (AIE) characteristics to rapidly visualize lipase activities has been constructed with compound P1 . Lipase of concentrations as low as 0.1 mg mL −1 can be detected and the assay range of lipase was located in 0.1–1.3 mg mL −1 . On the other hand, the selectivity of probe P1 , dynamic monitoring of enzymatic reaction and preliminary commercially enzyme activity screening was also summarized.