Bovine serum albumin surface imprinted polymer fabricated by surface grafting copolymerization on zinc oxide rods and its application for protein recognition

A novel bovine serum albumin (BSA) surface imprinted polymer based on ZnO rods was synthesized by surface grafting copolymerization. It exhibited an excellent recognition performance to bovine serum albumin. The adsorption capacity and imprinting factor of bovine serum albumin could reach 89.27 mg/g and 2.35, respectively. Furthermore, the fluorescence property of ZnO was used for tracing the process of protein imprinting and it implied the excellent optical sensing property of this material. More importantly, the hypothesis that the surface charge of carrier could affect the imprinting process was confirmed. That is, ZnO with positive surface charge could not only improve the recognition specificity of binding sites to template proteins (pI < 7), but also deteriorate the bindings between sites and non-template proteins (pI > 7). It was also important that the reusability of ZnO@BSA molecularly imprinted polymers was satisfactory. This implied that the poor mechanical/chemical stability of traditional zinc oxide sensors could be solved by the introduction of surface grafting copolymerization. These results revealed that the ZnO@BSA molecularly imprinted polymers are a promising optical/electrochemical sensor element.