A point-to-point “cap” strategy to construct a highly selective dual-function molecularly-imprinted sensor for the simultaneous detection of HAV and HBV

As an artificial biomimetic receptor, molecularly-imprinted polymer (MIP) has been widely used for the separation, enrichment and detection of various substances. However, due to the complexity of virus structure, huge volume and the existence of highly similar viruses, MIP shows unsatisfactory selectivity in virus detection. To overcome these issues, two kinds of virus nanoMIPs, just like a "cap", were synthesized by a solid-phase imprinting nanogel technique. The "cap" had no inner core and was much smaller than that of a conventional MIP, which was more favorable for mass transfer. Moreover, each "cap" could only combine with one target virus, which avoided the interference between large-volume virus molecules effectively. The two synthesized "caps" were mixed to construct a bifunctional MIP virus sensor for the simultaneous detection of Hepatitis A virus (HAV) and Hepatitis B virus (HBV). As expected, the selectivity factor (SF) for HBV detection reached 13.7, which was much higher than the reported virus MIP sensors (SF: 3-6), which was comparable to that of small molecular imprinting sensors. In addition, the high sensitivity toward HBV was 34.3 fM, and that of HAV was 27.1 pM. This method provides an idea for preparing high-selectivity biomacro-MIPs, as well as a method for the simultaneous detection of similar viruses with high sensitivity and selectivity. The recovery experiment of spiked serum showed that this method also has great practical application prospects.