“…Mercury ion (Hg 2+ ), an environmentally and toxicologically important element, being a research hotspot [17][18][19][20], also has been used as template to prepare Hg 2+ -IIPs for preconcentration of trace Hg 2+ [21][22][23]. However, the most commonly used functional monomers for HgIIPs, such as 4-VP and 3-mercaptopropyltrimethoxysilane (MPTAS), can provide coordination for many ions and thereby results in the low selectivity [21][22][23]. Recently, for many selective and sensitive chemosensors toward Hg 2+ , thymine (T) bases in DNA sequences have often been used as ligand because they can form stable T-Hg 2+ -T complexes while other metal ions do not show any evident interaction with T [24][25][26].…”