A sandwich sensor based on imprinted polymers and aptamers for highly specific double recognition of viruses

Highly selective and highly efficient identification of large viruses has been a major obstacle in the field of virus detection. In this work, a novel sandwich resonance light scattering sensor was designed based on molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) and aptamers for the first time. One of the recognition probes was obtained by molecular imprinting using environmentally friendly carbon spheres as carriers and the other by modification of the aptamer that can specifically recognize hepatitis B virus (HBV) on the surface of silicon spheres. In the presence of both probes, an MIP-HBV-aptamer sandwich structure was formed continuously in the system with the increase in HBV concentration, resulting in a strong resonance light scattering response. Finally, satisfactory selectivity and sensitivity were obtained, and the imprinting factor was as high as 7.56, which was higher than that reported in previous works of viral molecular imprinting sensor. In addition, it is of great significance to solve the problem of insufficient selectivity of traditional detection methods for macromolecular targets.