Trapping of biological macromolecules in the three-dimensional mesocage pore cavities of monolith adsorbents

Abstract

Gene technology is experiencing remarkable progress, and proteins are becoming crucial in the field of disease diagnosis and treatment. Adsorption of biomolecules on the surface of inorganic materials is an important technique for diagnostic assays and gene applications. In this study, highly ordered mesocage cubic Pm3n aluminumsilica monoliths were fabricated by the one-pot direct-templating of a microemulsion of the liquid crystalline phases of a Brij 56 surfactant. Mesocage cubic Pm3n aluminosilica monoliths with well-defined mesostructures offer high adsorption and loading capacity of proteins from an aqueous solution. Three-dimensional monoliths characterized by spherical pore cavities can potentially perform efficient adsorption and trapping of insulin, cytochrome C, lysozyme, myoglobin, β-lactoglobin proteins. A wide variety of characterization techniques such as SAXS, SEM, TEM, the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller method for nitrogen adsorption and surface area measurements, and TEM were used. The adsorption of proteins as well as the kinetic and thermodynamic characteristics of adsorption was studied, and adsorption isotherms were described by the Langmuir equation. Our findings indicated that monolayer coverage of proteins formed on mesoporous adsorbent surfaces during immobilization and uptake assays. Adsorption efficiency of proteins was attained after a number of reuse cycles, which indicates the presence of mesoporous adsorbents of biomolecules. Integration of mesoporous adsorbents may be feasible in various scientific fields such as nanobioscience, material science, artificial implantation, protein purification, biosensors, drug delivery systems, and molecular biology/biotechnology.