Preparation of supermacroporous cryogels with improved mechanical strength for efficient purification of lysozyme from chicken egg white

Abstract

A novel, facile, and robust strategy was proposed to increase the pore size and mechanical strength of cryogels. By mixing the monomers of acrylamide and 2‐hydroxyethyl methacrylate as the precursor, a monolithic copolymer cryogel with large interconnected pores and thick pore walls was prepared. Hydrogen bonding between the two monomers contributed to the entanglement and aggregation of the copolymers, thickening the pore walls and resulting in larger pore sizes. Analysis via mercury porosimetry demonstrated that the interconnected pore diameter of the copolymer cryogel ranged from 10‐350 µm, which was far larger than that of the cryogels from one monomer (10‐50 µm). Additionally, the thicker pore walls of the copolymer cryogel improved its mechanical strength. Affinity cryogels were prepared through covalent immobilization using Tris(hydroxymethyl)aminomethane as a coupling agent, and the affinity binding of lysozymes on Tris‐cryogel was evaluated by the Langmuir isothermal adsorption with the maximum adsorption capacity of 360 mg/g. Compared with that of the Tris‐cryogels produced from one monomer, the copolymer Tris‐cryogel exhibited higher adsorption capacity and lysozyme purity, when the chicken egg white solution flowed solely driven by gravity. This work provides a new avenue for designing and developing supermacroporous cryogels for bioseparation.

Microfibrillated cellulose reinforced poly(vinyl imidazole) cryogels for continuous removal of heavy metals

“…Obviously, small amounts of VIM were polymerized into the poly(VIM‐HEMA) cryogel and large amounts of VIM were leached from the cryogel during the thawing step. This result further confirmed that functional monomers exhibited low copolymerization reactivity into cryogels 51 . However, in the system of VIM and MFC precursor, almost all VIM was polymerized into the poly(VIM)/MFC cryogel, demonstrating that MFCs contribute to the polymerization of VIM during the freezing process.…”

“…This result further confirmed that functional monomers exhibited low copolymerization reactivity into cryogels. 51 However, in the system of VIM and MFC precursor, almost all VIM was polymerized into the poly(VIM)/MFC cryogel, demonstrating that MFCs contribute to the polymerization of VIM during the freezing process. This is likely attributed to the physical confinement of nanofibrous MFC extruded by the formed ice crystals, which forces the VIM close to each other for the polymerization within the cryogel.…”

Extraction, purification by cation exchange supermacroporous cryogel and physico‐chemical characterization of γ‐conglutin from lupin seeds (Lupinus albus L.)

“…They are, already consolidated matrices, presenting a highly porous structure with a low resistance to flow. Furthermore, these materials have a versatility regarding their surface functionalization, which allows customizing the chromatographic process depending on the biomolecule of interest [17–19].…”

Rapid Separation of Human Hemoglobin on a Large Scale From Non-clarified Bacterial Cell Homogenates Using Molecularly Imprinted Composite Cryogels

“…The advantages of the large and interconnected channels in cryogels have been studied and reported elsewhere (Plieva et al, 2011;Carvalho et al, 2014;Baimenov et al, 2020;Sun et al, 2020). This material has a unique construction for separation purposes, especially when dealing with particulate-containing fluids such as cell homogenates and wastewater (Hajizadeh et al, 2014(Hajizadeh et al, , 2018Önnby, 2016;Srivastava et al, 2016).…”

“…The formation of such macroporous hydrogels, known as cryogels, at sub-zero temperature was reported ∼50 years ago (Lozinsky, 2002). The cryotropic gelation process can be summarized as following (Lozinsky et al, 1984;Carvalho et al, 2014;Sun et al, 2020), (a) the reaction mixture is frozen below the solvent crystallization point, which contains unfrozen microspheres and crystals of the frozen solvent; (b) the concentration of the precursors increases dramatically in the microspheres and begins the polymerization; (c) the frozen sections act as a pore-forming agent and form macropores after being melted; (d) the formed polymeric network is interconnected since the solvent crystals grow until they meet the facet of another crystal. The large interconnected channels in the matrix allow passing particulatecontaining fluids such as blood (Derazshamshir et al, 2010), wastewater (Önnby, 2016), cell suspensions (Zhou et al, 2015;Hajizadeh et al, 2018) with low backpressure.…”