The preparation of bovine serum albumin surface-imprinted superparamagnetic polymer with the assistance of basic functional monomer and its application for protein separation

Currently, small proteins imprinting are more reported since large proteins molecular imprinting faces challenge due to their bulk size and complex structure. In this work, bovine serum albumin (BSA) surface-imprinted magnetic polymer was successfully synthesized based on atomic transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) method in the presence of common monomer (N-isopropylacrylamide) with the assistant of basic functional monomer (N-[3-(dimethylamino)propyl]-methacrylamide), which provides a achievable attempt for imprinting larger target proteins based on the ATPR with the mild reaction conditions. The BSA-imprinted polymer exhibited higher adsorption capacity and selectivity to BSA over the non-imprinted polymer. Competitive adsorption tests indicated the BSA-imprinted polymer had better selective adsorption and recognition properties to BSA in the mixture. The obtained BSA-imprinted polymer was applied to bovine serum, which also showed selectivity to BSA. In addition, a conventional aqueous two-phase solution of PEG/sulphate was used as elution for adsorbed BSA, which was compared with common NaCl elution.