Synthesis and Theoretical Study of Molecularly Imprinted Nanospheres for Recognition of Tocopherols

Abstract

Molecular imprinting is a technology that facilitates the production of artificial receptors toward compounds of interest. The molecularly imprinted polymers act as artificial antibodies, artificial receptors, or artificial enzymes with the added benefit over their biological counterparts of being highly durable. In this study, we prepared molecularly imprinted polymers for the purpose of binding specifically to tocopherol (vitamin E) and its derivative, tocopherol acetate. Binding of the imprinted polymers to the template was found to be two times greater than that of the control, non-imprinted polymers, when using only 10 mg of polymers. Optimization of the rebinding solvent indicated that ethanol-water at a molar ratio of 6:4 (v/v) was the best solvent system as it enhanced the rebinding performance of the imprinted polymers toward both tocopherol and tocopherol acetate with a binding capacity of approximately 2 mg/g of polymer. Furthermore, imprinted nanospheres against tocopherol was successfully prepared by precipitation polymerization with ethanol-water at a molar ratio of 8:2 (v/v) as the optimal rebinding solvent. Computer simulation was also performed to provide mechanistic insights on the binding mode of template-monomer complexes. Such polymers show high potential for industrial and medical applications, particularly for selective separation of tocopherol and derivatives.

The nanotoxicology revolution

“…Of course, these are mechanisms that are also common for larger particles and numerous soluble compounds. Therefore, there is no benefit to publish further articles confirming these mechanisms in It is well known that nanotechnology offers enormous potential for technological advancement (Ariga et al 2012a, b;Tong et al 2012;Dreaden et al 2012;Wang et al 2012;Marchan 2012;Tozak et al 2013;Stewart and Marchan 2012;Piacham et al 2013). Therefore, it is highly fortuitous that from the very beginning, toxicological research kept pace with the developments in the field of nanotechnology (Oberdorster et al 2005(Oberdorster et al , 2007Nel et al 2006;Lewinski et al 2008;Hardman 2006;Singh et al 2006;Xia et al 2008;Smart et al 2006;Donaldson et al 2004;Linse et al 2007).…”

Fabrication of an electrochemical molecularly imprinted polymer triamterene sensor based on multivariate optimization using multi-walled carbon nanotubes

“…Because of unique properties of MIP method such as ease of preparation, low-cost, high selectivity and high stability under hard conditions such as organic solvents or extreme pH values, this technique has been applied in chiral discrimination [26], liquid chromatography [27], capillary electro-chromatography [28], drug delivery [29], solid-phase extraction [30], antibody and receptor mimics [31], determination of drugs [32], cancer biomarkers and viruses [33], and sensing devices [34][35][36][37][38][39]. Zhao et al (2013) prepared molecularly imprinted monolithic column with a pseudo template employed for selective recognition of Tr in biological samples [40].…”

Electrochemical sensor based on imprinted sol–gel and nanomaterials for sensitive determination of bisphenol A

“…MIPs are of growing interest for their potential applications as artificial enzymes (Piacham, Nantasenamat, Suksrichavalit, Puttipanyalears, Pissawong, & Maneewas, 2009), advanced materials for solid-phase extraction (Jiang, Zhao, Jiang, Zhang, & Liu, 2008), and thin coatings for sensor devices (Dickert & Hayden, 2002). MIPs have already been used in some prototype gas sensor devices and liquid-phase sensors (Tappura, Vikholm, & Albers, 2007).…”