Multifunctional chemosensor for tracing Ga(III), hypochlorite and pH change with bioimaging in living cells, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Zebrafish

[Display omitted] •Multifunctional chemosensor has been employed for tracing Ga(III), HClO and pH.•HNAP-hdbt can identified Ga(III), HClO and pH via colorimetric and fluorometric.•HNAP-hdbt is able to bioimage Ga(III), HClO and pH in cells and bacteria.•Visualized fluorescence recovery of Ga(III), HClO and pH can realized on zebrafish. Ga(III), HClO, and pH (OH−) are all crucial players in multiple biological or chemical processes. A molecular chemosensor which can fulfill their accurate and fast detection simultaneously will be of great advantages over using three individual sensors. In light of this, we herein present the development and assessment of a novel multifunctional fluorometric chemosensor, HNAP-hdbt. After a successful synthesis and characterization of this sensor with two-in-one strategy, we further applied it in the detection of those three target analytes in multiple settings and results demonstrated that HNAP-hdbt is a novel chemosensor for realizing highly sensitive and selective imaging identification of Ga(III), HClO, and OH− in aqueous solution, live cancer cells, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and zebrafish with excellent water solubility, good biocompatibility, and highly reversible sensing signals. All of these results indicate the successful development of a new multifunctional chemosensor for tracking those ions. To the best of our knowledge, this work presents one of the less seen scenarios in the report of chemosensors which are trifunctional in detecting three disparate types of vital species. Therefore, we strongly believe this work will be of great interest to the research community in the fields of chemo- or fluorescent sensors.