There is a trend to find new ways of using photocatalysis in order to synthesize valuable products or to control or track live processes with special fluorescence-based molecular probes. The paper presents some results concerning new photochemical properties of azidoaniline, its 7-nitrobenzofurazan (NBD) derivative and ciprofloxacin derivatives.

Zn-containing proteins play essential roles in the viability and virulence of bacteria, so are considered to be possible molecular new drug targets. Based on literature data about N-acyl-o-phenylenediamine and 2-pycolylamine as warheads of drugs and molecular probes for Zn-bearing enzymes like histone deacetylases, we guessed that N-(7-nitrobenzofurazan-4-y)-o-phenylenediamine (NBD-OPD), 2-pycolyl-(N-(7-nitrobenzofurazan-4-amine)) and ciprofloxacin 2-pycolylamide (CPF-Pic2) are potential fluorescent inhibitors of such enzymes. Molecular docking was performed for estimate affinity of the compounds to a set of bacterial enzymes, and photochemical and electrochemical properties were calculated in silico using DFT.