Nanoporous gold channel with attached DNA nanolock for drug screening.

Soft matter, which is sensitive to weak interaction and easily deformed by external stimuli, plays essential roles in natural sensing systems. For example, the allosteric effect of protein in ion channels dominates the selective ion transportation in cellular processes. [ 1 ] Inspired by natural systems, a wide variety of artifi cial sensing systems have been constructed from soft matter. Recently, synthetic nanosensors comprising soft matter and solid-state nanomaterials have shown excellent advantages for their high sensitivity, as well as a wide variety of signal transducing mechanisms. [ 2 ] Soft matter used in nanosensor systems usually includes polymer, [ 3 ] hydrogel, [ 4 ]