The Development of a New Signal Transduction Strategy for Molecularly Imprinted Chemosensing

Chemosensing refers to the detection of targeted analytes by molecular-level sensors - chemosensors. It offers a lot of advantageous features over conventional instrumental chemical analysis. The aim of this project is to develop a new signal transduction strategy for chemosensing using molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) as artificial receptors. By incorporating photoisomerizable azobenzene chromophores into the imprinted receptor sites of MIPs, the lowering of the free volume within the receptors after analyte binding can be reflected by the reduction in the rate of the photoisomerization process. The researchers' preliminary data have already demonstrated the feasibility of this signal transduction strategy. In this project, further investigation into the transduction mechanism and optimization of the signal transduction responses will be conducted. This photoisomerization chemosensing strategy is convenient to achieve and universally applicable to all kinds of substrates. This approach can greatly simplify the design, development and fabrication of new chemosensors for a wide variety of clinical and industrial relevant analytes.