Development of molecular imprinting-based smart cryogels for selective recognition and separation of serum cytochrome-c as a biochemical indicator

Abstract

The recognition and detection of proteins has an important role in the fields of biochemistry and medicine in term of diagnosis and prognosis. In this study, molecularly imprinted cryogel (MIP) was synthesized for the selective recognition of Cytochrome-c (Cyt-c) by cryopolymerization techniques with the lanthanide-chelate approach using (MAAP)2-Ce(III) as complex functional monomer and Cyt-c as a template protein. The incorporation of template with monomer was characterized by near- infrared (Near-IR) spectroscopy. The binding capacity was optimized in accordance with numerous experimental parameters including pH, initial Cyt-c concentration, flow rate, temperature and ionic strength. As a result, the maximum binding capacity reached to 98.33 mg g-1 in a buffer system with a pH of 6.0. Beside of the excellent reusability performance of prepared MIP, it was successfully applied to separation of template Cyt-c in the existence of hemoglobin (Hb) and myoglobin (Mb) chosen as interfering proteins. The relative selectivity constants of the Cyt-imprinted polymer were determined as 13.84 for the Cyt/Mb pair and 16.05 for the Cyt/Hb pair. Consequently, a high selectivity, simple and cheap strategy for efficient separation of proteins was provided with this novel MIP cryogel.