Nanosized aptameric cavities imprinted on the surface of magnetic nanoparticles for high-throughput protein recognition.

The authors introduce a new kind of surface artificial biomimetic receptor, referred to as aptameric imprinted polymer (AIP), for separation of biological macromolecules. Highly dispersed magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) were coated with silica and then functionalized with methacrylate groups via silane chemistry. The aptamer was covalently immobilized on the surface of nanoparticles via a "thiol-ene" click reaction. Once the target analyte (bovine serum albumin; BSA) has bound to the aptamer, a polymer is created by 2-dimensional copolymerization of short-length poly(ethylene glycol) and (3-aminopropyl)triethoxysilane. Following removal of BSA from the polymer, the AIP-MNPs presented here can selectively capture BSA with a specific absorbance (κ) as high as 65. When using this AIP, the recovery of BSA from spiked real biological samples is >97%, and the adsorption capacity is as high as 146 mg g-1. In our perception, this method has a wide scope in that it may be applied to the specific extraction of numerous other biomolecules. Graphical abstract Schematic presentation of the AIP (aptamer-imprinted polymer) introduced here. The surface of silica coated magnetic nanoparticles is modified with a polymer that is covalently modified with an aptamer against bovine serum albumin (BSA).