Use of molecularly imprinted polymers from a mixture of tetracycline and its degradation products to produce affinity membranes for the removal of tetracycline from water.

The possibility of introducing multiple recognition in artificial receptors by imprinting polymers, using a mixture of tetracycline (TC) and its degradation products as templates, has been examined. The recognition ability of the resulting molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP), as evaluated by batch rebinding assay, was found to be group-specific to tetracyclines, while the single tetracycline imprinted polymer (MIP-2) prepared using TC free from degradation products as the print molecule showed considerably high selectivity for doxycycline (DC) and modest selectivity for TC and other TC derivatives, oxytetracycline (OTC) and chlortetracycline (CTC). Based on the recognition property of the multiple tetracycline imprinted polymer (MIP-1), the polymer was applied in affinity membrane extraction as a class-selective adsorption phase to remove tetracyclines residues from water.