Abstract
As sugars are essential biological molecules for human existence, simple and prompt recognition of sugars in water is a very important issue. Therefore, various kinds of sugar sensors have been developed. The fluorescent boronic acids are focused as chemical sensors among them due to their stabilities. The boronic acids are important functional groups for design of chemical sensors for sugar recognition, because they are known to form esters with diols. In this paper, a fundamental recognition function and sugar selectivity of phenylboronic acids and an importance of multipoint interaction for glucose recognition have been introduced. In addition, as a combination of boronic acid fluorescent sensors with cyclodextrins (CDs), unique sugar recognition functions of CD and chemically modified CD complexes are mainly reviewed.
