text: Chemosensors are nano-sized molecules and for application in vivo need to be non-toxic. A chemosensor must be able to give a measurable signal in direct response to the analyte recognition. Hence, the signal response is directly related to the magnitude of the sensing event (and, in turn concentration of the analyte). While the signalling moiety acts as a signal transducer, converting the recognition event into an optical response. The recognition moiety is responsible for binding to the analyte in a selective and reversible manner. If the binding sites are irreversible chemical reactions, the indicators are described as fluorescent chemodosimeters, or fluorescent probes.
  An active communication pathway has to be open between the two moieties for the sensor to operate. In colorimetric chemosensors, this usually relies on the receptor and transducer to be structurally integrated. In luminescent/fluorescent chemosensing these two parts can be spaced out or connected with a covalent spacer. The communication pathway is through electron transfer or energy transfer for such fluorescent chemosensors. The effectiveness of the host–guest recognition between the receptor and the analyte depends on several factors, including the design of the receptor moiety, which is objective is to match as much the nature of the structural nature of the target analyte, as well as the nature of the environment that the sensing event occurs within (e.g. the type of media, i.e. blood, saliva, urine, etc. in biological samples). An extension to this approach is the development of molecular beacons, which are oligonucleotide hybridization probes based on fluorescence signalling where the recognition or the sensing event is communicated through enhancement or reduction in luminescence through the use of Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) mechanism.