Can protein-imprinted polymers be used as selective binding assays?
We developed a computer simulation to study synthetic materials capable of specific and selective recognition of proteins via molecular imprinting. Polymer-based protein recognition systems are believed to have enormous potential within the clinical and diagnostic fields due to their reusability, biocompatibility, ease of manufacturing, and potential specificity. The imprinting mechanism involves the creation of cavities of complementary shape, size, and functionality to the original template molecule. While imprinting of small molecular templates has met with considerable success, experiments with protein-imprinted polymers (PIPs) have so far resulted in materials with limited selectivity. Several factors contribute to poor recognition, including limited synthesis conditions and the need for porous and flexible gels necessary for diffusion of the protein into imprinted sites binding. We investigated some factors that contribute to poor imprinting of proteins using a coarse-grained lat
