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

Abstract

A novel kind of transferrin imprinted polymer particles was synthesized by a hierarchical strategy. First, transferrin was immobilized on silica beads by non-covalent absorption. Then, a pre-polymerization mixture, composed of 1,4-bis(acryloyl)piperazine, methacrylamide, methacrylic acid, ammonium sulfate and polyoxyethylene sorbitan monolaurate, was irrigated into the pores of silica particles, and polymerized at 25 °C. Finally, the silica matrix was etched with ammonium hydrogen fluoride, not only to remove the template protein, but also to expose protein recognition sites on the surface of the imprinted polymer. The binding capacity of the transferrin-imprinted particles is 6.3 mg of protein per gram of material, and the time required to reach adsorption equilibrium was less than 10 min. The imprinting factor of transferrin is ca. 3.3 in the presence of ribonuclease B, cytochrome c and β-lactoglobulin. The results indicate that these imprinted polymer particles can recognize transferrin with good selectivity, high binding capacity and fast mass transfer. They may be applied as an artificial antibody to remove the high abundance proteins in plasma.