Metal chelation dual-template epitope imprinting polymer via distillation-precipitation polymerization for recognition of porcine serum albumin

A novel dual-template epitope imprinting polymer coated on magnetic carbon nanotubes (MCNTs@D-EMIP) was successfully prepared for specific recognition of porcine serum albumin (PSA) via dual-template epitope imprinting, metal chelation imprinting and distillation-precipitation polymerization (DPP). C-terminal peptides and N-terminal peptides of PSA were selected as templates simultaneously, and zinc acrylate and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) were used as functional monomer and cross-linker, respectively. The epitope templates were immobilized by metal chelation and six-membered ring formed with zinc acrylate. Finally, MCNTs@D-EMIP was synthesized by DPP in only 30 min, which was much shorter than those of other polymerization methods. The prepared MCNTs@D-EMIP displayed specific recognition ability toward PSA and its adsorption amount and imprinting factor were 45.05 mg g-1 and 4.50, which were much higher than those of single template epitope imprinting polymers. Besides, high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) analysis of PSA in porcine blood serum real sample indicated that the specificity was not affected by other competitive proteins, which forcefully stated that the MCNTs@D-EMIP had potential to be applied in bio-separation area. In addition, the results of cross-reactivity experiment proved that this strategy had generality to prepare dual-template epitope imprinting polymer for recognition of target protein. In summary, this study provided an efficient protocol to recognize target protein in complex sample via dual-template epitope imprinting approach, metal chelation imprinting and distillation-precipitation polymerization.