LAUSR

Abstract This present paper is the first report showing the preparation and protein binding properties of new polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and/or Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) nanofibers based calixarene tetraester units by electrospinning of calixarene tetraester and PAN or PMMA solutions in DMF. The newly prepared nanofibers materials was fully characterized by using spectroscopic techniques. From the obtained spectroscopic results, existing of calixarene molecules onto the fiber matrix was proved by the presence of the characteristic calixarene bands in FTIR spectra and considerable changing of surface morphologies of fiber matrix in SEM image. Furthermore, the protein extraction studies were performed by batch method toward green fluorescence protein (GFP) as a model protein and protein binding results exhibited that nanofibers based calixarene could be actively used as a support material for the binding of green fluorescence protein (GFP) from aqueous solutions. The results were compared with bare PAN and PMMA without calixarene and it was observed that GFP binding was higher in the case of calixarene-coated nanofibers especially for nanofibers containing calixarene ester derivatives. In addition, amino acid extraction studies were also performed to clarify the possible binding interaction between nanofibers and protein. From the amino acid extraction experiments, it was determined that the excellent interaction between protein and nanofibers became with amino acids having aromatic side arms such as phenylalanine and tryptophan.