Dummy Imprinted Proteins as Receptors for Bioinorganic Sorbent

A procedure is developed for preparing a selective bioinorganic adsorbent based on silicon dioxide particles modified with an imprinted protein (IPs). Bovine serum albumin served as the matrix protein molecule. The imprinting process was carried out in the presence of several template molecules—coumarin, 4-hydroxycoumarin, quercetin, and 5,7-dimethoxycoumarin—which acted as dummy templates of the mycotoxin ZEN. To pre-evaluate the feasibility of replacing ZEN with dummy templates and to determine the optimal concentration of the template molecules for IP synthesis, methods of computational chemistry were used, including molecular docking and molecular dynamics. Surface premodification of silicon dioxide particles proved essential for synthesizing IP-based sorbents. The resulting bioinorganic adsorbents demonstrated ability of extracting template molecules through solid-phase extraction from model solutions: coumarin (Q = 2.0 mg/g), 4-hydroxycoumarin (Q = 1.2 mg/g), quercetin (Q = 0.8 mg/g), 5,7-dimethoxycoumarin (Q = 2.2 mg/g), and ZEN from a wheat extract (Q = 4.79 mg/g, IF = 2.45). Zearalenone adsorption isotherms were constructed for IP-modified sorbents synthesized using different dummy templates. The cytotoxicity of the IPs was studied and their biosafety was assessed using the AGREEMIP tool.