Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
11.1 Introduction
11.1.1
What is “Imprinting”?
At er earshot the word “imprinting” the i rst thing came in our mind is
what is “imprinting”? What is the dif erence between “imprinting” and
“printing”? h ere is a major dif erence between these two; printing means
making copy of something whereas, imprinting means making a copy of
something onto the substrate and/or surface. In molecular imprinting
technology, people attempt to make imprint of molecules (either micro- or
macro-) in the polymer matrix, hence popularly known as “molecularly
imprinted polymers (MIPs)”. h e word or the innovation of imprinted
materials came from our biological or natural phenomenon of “molecular
recognition”. h e term molecular recognition refers to the specii c inter-
action between two or more molecules through non-covalent bonding
such as hydrogen bonding, metal coordination, hydrophobic forces, van
der Waals forces, π-π interactions, halogen bonding and/or electrostatic
interaction. h e host and guest involved in molecular recognition exhibit
molecular complementarity [1].
Molecular recognition plays an important role in biological systems
and is observed in between receptor-ligand, antigen-antibody, DNA-
protein, sugar-lectin, RNA-ribosome, etc. Molecular recognition can be
subdivided into static molecular recognition and dynamic molecular rec-
ognition (Figure 11.1). Static molecular recognition is likened to the inter-
action between a key and a keyhole; it is a 1:1 type complexation reaction
between a host molecule and a guest molecule to form a host-guest com-
plex. To achieve advanced static molecular recognition, it is necessary to
Figure 11.1
Schematic representation showing static and dynamic molecular recognition.
[Source: Wikipedia page for molecular recognition].
