Molecular imprinting is a facilitative technology for the production of artificial receptors possessing great endurance
with high specificity toward targetmolecules of interest. The polymers are commonly applied for separation
or analysis of substances of interest. In this study, we prepared molecularly imprinted polymers for the purpose
of binding specifically to quercetin and related compounds. Quercetin was used as the template molecule, 4-
vinylpyridine (4-VP) as the functional monomer, ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EDMA) as the cross-linking
monomer, azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) as the polymerization initiator and ethanol as the porogenic solvent.
Such 4-VP-based imprinted polymer was found to bind the template molecule greater than that of the control
polymer with an approximate 2 folds higher binding using 20 mg of polymer in the optimal solvent, ethanol:
water (4:1 v/v). Quercetin-imprinted polymer (QIP) was found to bind well against its template; approximately
1 mg/g polymer. In addition, QIP was applied to bind anthocyanin fromthe crude extract of mangosteen pericarp.
The binding capacity of quercetin-MIP toward anthocyanin was approximately 0.875 mg per gram of polymer.
This result indicated that quercetin-MIP showed its specific binding to quercetin and related compound particularly
anthocyanin. In conclusion, we have demonstrated the successful preparation and utilization of molecularly
imprinted polymer for the specific recognition of quercetin as well as structurally related anthocyanins from the
mangosteen pericarp with enhanced and robust performance.