Accurate detection of multiple small end-metabolic biomarkers is more sensitive than large biomoleculesto provide real-time feedbacks of physiological/pathologicalstate, but is more challenging due to lack of specific identifyinggroups. Current optical platforms suffer from unsatisfactoryresolutions to differentiate each target because they producesimilar output to different targets using a single excitation,and inevitably involve non-functional components that increase chances of interacting with non-target molecules.Herein, by taking full advantage of each building unit’sfunctionality to integrate multivariate recognition elements inone interface, a dual-excitation-driven full-component-responsive metal-organic framework (MOF)-based luminescentprobe, namely CeTMA-TMA-Eu, is successfully custom-tailored for detecting both pseudouridine (Ψ) and N-acetylaspartate (NAA), the diagnostic hallmarks of cancer andneurodegenerative disorder. Remarkably, Ψ interacts withMOF’s organic building unit (trimesic acid, TMA) and filtersout its absorptions of 262 nm-light to reduce its energytransferred to Eu^(3+), while NAA induces the valence transitionof Ce^(4+)/Ce^(3+) nodes to improve the cooperative energy transferefficacy from TMA and Ce^(3+) to Eu^(3+). As a result, this platformexhibits completely reverse photoresponses towards Ψ(“switch-off” at 262 nm excitation) and NAA (“switch-on”upon 296 nm excitation), and demonstrates excellent selectivity and sensitivity in complex biofluids, with low detection limits of 0.16 and 0.15 μM, and wide linear ranges of0–180 and 0–100 μM, respectively. Such full-componentresponsive probe with dual-excitation-mediated reverse responses for multi-small targets intrinsically minimizes its interaction with non-target molecules and amplifies resolutionto discriminate each target, providing a new strategy for improving assay accuracy of multi-small biomarkers in diagnostics.
