Silica beads recognition

Hence, building on this approach, part of the protein of interest, an epitope, has been surface imprinted, instead of the whole, and the resulting binding sites were successfully used to capture the whole protein by recognition of the imprinted part (Fig. 4). In both cases, silica beads, membrane pores, or nanowire surfaces have been used as sacrificial supports and were easily removed by dissolution after polymerization occurred. 

CNTs) with theophylline as the template molecule [78] and from porous silica beads with thiabendazole as the print molecule [79], and these have been applied as molecular recognition agents. Qin et al. [80] made use of the stability of the dithiocarbamyl radicals generated upon photoactivation of iniferters to synthesize lysozyme-imprinted hydrophilic MlPs. These were created by Sl-lMP of acrylamide and N,N -methylenebisacrylamide from iniferter-derivatized mesoporous polystyrene beads (in the presence of the template protein lysozyme) and used in chromatographic separations that employed an aqueous mobile phase. They found that the control and stability imparted by Sl-lMP are crucial elements that enhance the separation of lysozyme from other competing proteins. 

Besides the typical syntheses of polymer brushes from flat, low-area substrates, STIMP can be conducted from cellulose membranes, carbon nanotubes, and silica or polymeric beads, which has allowed Sl-lMP to be used for synthesis of molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) from a variety of supports [76-80]. The use of SI-IMP to fabricate MIPs is particularly advantageous over more common fabrication of MIPs by surface-initiated polymerization from surface-bound conventional initiators because the dithiocarbamyl radicals generated from surface-bound iniferters do not cause polymerization in solution, resulting in improved separation capacity [76-80]. In this section a few examples of fabrication of MIPs synthesized by STIMP from a variety of supports for molecular recognition or separation applications are briefly summarized with a focus on particular advantages enabled by the STIMP method. 

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