Achieving in situ dynamic tracking of neurotransmitters in the complex intestinal lumen remains a major technical challenge in gastroenterology and biosensing. The research team developed a general sensing architecture that integrates a one-dimensional nanoconductive network with supramolecular host-guest recognition, and on this basis constructed a stretchable electrochemical sensing platform. This platform offers a systematic solution to three key obstacles in the in situ detection of small molecules in the gut lumen: adaptation to mechanical deformation, suppression of biofouling, and selective recognition of structurally similar molecules. Using this framework, the team revealed for the first time the central role of enterochromaffin cells (ECs) in immune-mechanical signal integration by electrochemical strategy. Under stimulation by microbial mimetics and their metabolites, ECs integrate multiple external signals and reset their response threshold through dual regulation: enhancing neurotransmitter synthesis and storage while increasing sensitivity to mechanical stimulation.
The significance of this study lies not only in validating sensing performance in the intestinal setting, but also in proposing a practical strategy to address a long-standing and widely shared challenge in in vivo electrochemical monitoring. More importantly, by emphasizing the coordinated design of sensing material structure and function, this work moves beyond optimizing a single performance metric in stretchable devices and instead establishes a systematic framework for accurate chemical information acquisition in complex mechanical and biochemical environments. Although the intestinal lumen serves here as a particularly challenging validation scenario, the underlying design principles are expected to be applicable to other in vivo monitoring systems.
