Artificial protein sensors.

Protein recognition by synthetic molecules is a challenging endeavour, since these materials must bind to a large relatively flat surface domain and recognize a unique distribution of amino acid residues of varying charge, size and shape. The most promising routes involve specific metal coordination, epitope-docking on miniature proteins, aptamer selection, nonnatural peptide isosteres, functionalized platforms, secondary structure mimetics, molecular imprinting and receptors embedded in lipid layers.