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Despite the structural significance of boroxines in different classes of materials, their applicability in aqueous media is limited by their hydrolytic instability. Here, the authors discovered a water-stable boroxine structure with excellent pH stability and water-compatible dynamic covalent bonds.

Inspired from Ca²⁺-induced Ca²⁺ release process responsible for Ca²⁺ channel and muscle contraction, a smart Ca²⁺ self-regulated nanochannel system is constructed by the convergence of a Ca²⁺-responsive polymer with porous anodic alumina membrane. Dynamic gating behavior of the nanochannel could be precisely modulated by Ca²⁺ concentration utilizing remarkable conformational transition of the copolymer chains from globule to coil.

Life is a multiscale chiral system, which ingeneously combine small chiral biomolecules to biomacromolecules with special stereo-conformations and functions via chemical bonding and weak chemical interactions, for example, hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions, which further assemble to build up macroscopic biological entities showing distinct assymetric characteristics, for example, right-handed conches and so on. This brings much inspiration to construct artificial systems being able to transform chiral signals to macroscopic properties of materials based on chirality-responsive polymers, which find broad applications in various domains of chemical engineering, industry, biology and medicine.

The structural complexity of glycans seriously challenges the currently available analytical methods. Here, the authors report the identification of glycan isomers, glycans with varying chain lengths, and distinct branched glycans, via a glycan derivatization strategy and nanopore sensing.

Capture of low-abundance multiply phosphorylated peptides (MPPs) is difficult due to limitation of enrichment materials and their interactions with phosphates. Here the authors show, a smart polymer driven by specific but tunable hydrogen bonding interactions can differentially complex with MPPs, singly phosphorylated and non-modified peptides.

Polyamine detection is of particular importance in the food industry, typically achieved via direct bonding between sensor and analyte or by indicator displacement. Here, the self-assembly of iron–sulfur complexes is shown to enable the efficient and selective detection of polyamines, driven by an order-to-order transition upon assembly.

Sialylated glycans (SGs), abundant in cell membranes, play decisive roles in regulating ion channels (e.g., NaV1.4, KV1.1, CaV1.2) in life system, only when the ion channels work stably and accurately can life activities proceed normally. Here we construct a biomimetic SG-modulated nanochannel based on a smart polymer design. Carbohydrate‒carbohydrate interaction triggers globule-to-coil transition of the polymer chains, which regulated the dynamic ion gating behavior of this nanochannel, resulting in a significant reduction in transmembrane ionic current. This device exhibits excellent specificity and sensitivity in response to α-2,6-linked sialyllactose, further realizing real-time monitoring of the sialylation reaction catalyzed by α2,6-sialyltransferase.

Sialylated complex-type N-linked glycans on cytomembrane are acknowledged as effective biomarkers for cancer diagnose. Owing to their complicated structures and low-abundance, developing glycan-targeted materials with high specificity is quite challenging. To resolve this problem, we reported a biomimetic design for dipeptide-based smart polymer, as well as its excellent performance in sialo-N-linked glycan recognition, adsorption, linkage isomers discrimination and high-efficiency capture from complex protein sample.

The exquisite structures of biological ion channels provide inspiration for designing and constructing artificial ion channels to achieve analogous functions. Hierarchically engineered heterogeneous nanochannels with excellent ion rectification, selectivity, and gating properties have attracted more and more attention. In this review, we briefly review the recent advances of hierarchically engineered nanochannel systems in terms of pore-on-pore and pore-in-pore structures, with an emphasis on the promising applications, including ion-selective transport, osmotic energy harvesting, separation, and biosensing.