LAUSR

Despite great achievements in sensitive and selective detection of important biomolecules in living cells, it is still challenging to develop smart and controllable sensing nanodevices for cellular studies that can be activated at desired time in target sites. To ad-dress this issue, we have constructed a remote-controlled "Lock-Unlock" nanosystem for visual analysis of endogenous potassium ions (K+), which employed dual-stranded aptamer precursor (DSAP) as recognition molecules, SiO2 based gold nanoshells (AuNS) as nanocarriers and near-infrared ray (NIR) as the remotely applied stimulus. With the well-designed and activatable DSAP-AuNS, the deficiencies of traditional aptamer-based sensors have been successfully overcome, and undesired response during transport have been avoided, especially in complex physiological microenvironments. While triggered by NIR, the increased local tempera-ture of AuNS induced the dehybridiztion of DSAP, realized the "Lock-Unlock" switch of the DSAP-AuNS nanosystem, activat-ed the binding capability of aptamer, and then monitored intracellular K+ via the change of fluorescence signal. This DSAP-AuNS nanosystem not only allows us to visualize endogenous ions in living cells at desired time, but also paves the way for fabricating temporal controllable nanodevices for cellular studies.