Transferrin recognition based on a protein imprinted material prepared by hierarchical imprinting technique

Molecularly Imprinted Nanogels Capable of Porcine Serum Albumin Detection in Raw Meat Extract for Halal Food Control

Accurate, simple, and valuable analytical methods for detection of food contamination are rapidly expanding to evaluate the validity of food product quality because of ethnic considerations and food safety. Herein molecularly imprinted nanogels (MIP-NGs), capable of porcine serum albumin (PSA) recognition, were prepared as artificial molecular recognition elements. The MIP-NGs were immobilized on a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensor for detection of pork contamination in real beef extract samples. The MIP-NGs-based QCM sensor showed high affinity and excellent selectivity toward PSA compared to reference serum albumins from five different animals. The high PSA specificity of MIP-NGs led to the detection of pork contamination with a detection limit of 1% (v/v) in real beef extract samples. We believe the artificial molecular recognition materials prepared by molecular imprinting are a promising candidate for halal food control.

Surface protein imprinted core-shell particles for high selective lysozyme recognition prepared by reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer strategy

A novel kind of lysozyme (Lys) surface imprinted core-shell particles was synthesized by reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) strategy. With controllable polymer shell chain length, such particles showed obviously improved selectivity for protein recognition. After the RAFT initial agent and template protein was absorbed on silica particles, the prepolymerization solution, with methacrylic acid and 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate as the monomers, and N,N'-methylenebis(acrylamide) as the cross-linker, was mixed with the silica particles, and the polymerization was performed at 40 °C in aqueous phase through the oxidation-reduction initiation. Ater polymerization, with the template protein removal and destroying dithioester groups with hexylamine, the surface Lyz imprinted particles were obtained with controllable polymer chain length. The binding capacity of the Lys imprinted particles could reach 5.6 mg protein/g material, with the imprinting factor (IF) as 3.7, whereas the IF of the control material prepared without RAFT strategy was only 1.6. The absorption equilibrium could be achieved within 60 min. Moreover, Lys could be selectively recognized by the imprinted particles from both a four-proteins mixture and egg white sample. All these results demonstrated that these particles prepared by RAFT strategy are promising to achieve the protein recognition with high selectivity.

Preparation of protein imprinted materials by hierarchical imprinting techniques and application in selective depletion of albumin from human serum

Hierarchical imprinting was developed to prepare the protein imprinted materials, as the artificial antibody, for the selective depletion of HSA from the human serum proteome. Porcine serum albumin (PSA) was employed as the dummy template for the fabrication of the recognition sites. To demonstrate the advantages of the hierarchical imprinting, molecularly imprinted polymers prepared by hierarchical imprinting technique (h-MIPs) were compared with those obtained by bulk imprinting (b-MIPs), in terms of the binding capacity, adsorption kinetics, selectivity and synthesis reproducibility. The binding capacity of h-MIPs could reach 12 mg g⁻¹. And saturation binding could be reached in less than 20 min for the h-MIPs. In the protein mixture, h-MIPs exhibit excellent selectivity for PSA, with imprinting factors as about 3.6, much higher than those for non-template proteins. For the proteomic application, the identified protein group number in serum treated by h-MIPs was increased to 422, which is 21% higher than that obtained from the original serum, meanwhile the identified protein group number for the Albumin Removal kit was only 376. The results demonstrate that protein imprinted polymers prepared by hierarchical imprinting technique, might become the artificial antibodies for the selective depletion of high abundance proteins in proteome study.