Guanine plays an indispensable role in building nucleic acids, and its derivatives take part in various cellular functions such as regulating biological reactions and signal transduction. Monitoring the levels of guanine and its derivatives is critical for understanding their biological roles and related diseases. Aside from traditional chromatography-based methods, majority of the current detections were based on electrochemistry and the oxidation activity of guanine, for which guanine and adenine often had a similar response. Over the last 30 years, various new sensing strategies have been developed. To provide researchers with more options for specific sensing of guanine and its derivatives, herein we review molecular recognition strategies based on nucleic acids, proteins, small organic molecules, molecularly imprinted polymers to nanomaterials. The mechanism of each molecular recognition strategy is discussed. Based on these target recognition molecules, we also critically review representative fluorescent and electrochemical sensors for guanine-related analytes from an application point of view, and provide readers with our perspectives to further grow this direction.

鸟嘌呤在构建核酸中起着不可或缺的作用，其衍生物参与多种细胞功能，例如调节生物反应和信号转导。监测鸟嘌呤及其衍生物的水平对于了解其生物学作用和相关疾病至关重要。除了传统的基于色谱的方法外，当前大多数检测都是基于电化学和鸟嘌呤的氧化活性，对此，鸟嘌呤和腺嘌呤通常具有相似的响应。在过去的30年中，已经开发了各种新的传感策略。为了为研究人员提供更多的鸟嘌呤及其衍生物的特异性传感选择，在这里，我们将基于核酸，蛋白质，有机小分子，分子印迹聚合物形成纳米材料。讨论了每种分子识别策略的机理。基于这些目标识别分子，我们还从应用的角度严格审查了鸟嘌呤相关分析物的代表性荧光和电化学传感器，并为读者提供了进一步发展这一方向的观点。