Various materials with molecular recognition function can be used as selective/specific adsorbents for sample processing and purification. The combination of advanced materials with molecular recognition capabilities and appropriate analytical instruments can generate efficient hyphenated analytical methods for proteomics, metabolomics and glycomics. For example, by combining molecularly imprinted mesoporous nanomaterials that can recognize phosphate and mass spectrometry, we have developed an efficient method for protein phosphorylation analysis (Figure 1). In addition, using boronate affinity materials for selective enrichment of biomolecules such as nucleosides, glycopeptides and glycans, and combining them with capillary electrophoresis and bio-mass spectrometry will be able to generate high-throughput -omics analysis methods.

Figure 1. The combination of imprinted mesoporous nanomaterials for efficient analysis of protein phosphorylation and mass spectrometry.