Aptamer Modified Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Silica Monolithic Capillary Columns for Highly Selective Recognition of Thrombin

A novel kind of aptamer modified organic-inorganic hybrid silica monolithic capillary column has been developed, via the covalent bonding of 5'-NH2-modified aptamer for human alpha-thrombin on hybrid silica monolith, prepared by sol-gel method, with tetraethoxysilane and 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane as precursors. Due to the large specific surface area of the hybrid matrix, the average coverage density of aptamer reached 568 pmol/mu L, and the thrombin binding capacity was 1.15 mu g/mu L, 14 times higher than that of aptamer modified open tubular capillaries. By such an affinity capillary column, the limit of detection of thrombin was decreased to 3.4 nM with a UV detector. Furthermore, even when thrombin was mixed with 1000 times more concentrated human serum, it could be selectively enriched and detected with the signal-to-noise ratio as ca.10. These results indicate that the developed preparation strategy for aptamer based hybrid silica monolithic capillary column might provide an effective method to achieve highly selective recognition of trace targets.