Recent work suggests that molecular recognition elements can be synthetically produced at the nano-scale, circumventing the need for naturally occurring molecular recognition elements for the development of sensing tools for small molecules. Bio-mimetic polymers such as molecular imprinted polymers and peptoids can be used to recognize larger biological targets such as proteins  and the conjugation of polymers to synthetic fluorescent nanomaterials can generate synthetic macromolecular structures that serve as synthetic antibodies for optical protein recognition and detection.