Preparation of In‐Situ Multifunctional Silicon Self‐Assembled Molecularly Imprinted Polymers for Selective Extraction of Protein

The sol-gel method demonstrates significant potential for fabricating protein molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). In order to maintain good protein structure and provide more recognition functional groups during the preparation of protein MIPs. In this study, an exceptionally mild sol-gel protocol for protein MIPs synthesis was developed, in which no catalyst or organic solvent was employed and abundant recognition groups were introduced through in-situ derivatization. This method has been applied in the preparation of MIPs using lysozyme (lys) as a template. The developed MIPs exhibit high adsorption capacity and selectivity toward lys. The generation of the imprinting effect was successfully demonstrated by observing the surface morphology and evaluating the physical/chemical properties of the synthesized MIPs. In subsequent adsorption experiments, MIPs also showed excellent adsorption performance (389.85 mg/g) and quickly reached the adsorption equilibrium within 60 min. In addition, the selectivity of MIPs for lys was improved by the sol-gel imprinting process, and good reusability was observed after five adsorption-desorption cycles. The method was also successfully applied to isolate lys from egg white samples. This work demonstrates the great potential of the sol-gel strategy in the field of molecular imprinting.