INFLUENCE OF THE HAPTEN DESIGN ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPETITIVE ELISA FOR THE DETERMINATION OF THE ANTIFOULING AGENT IRGAROL-1051 AT TRACE LEVELS

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) with a high detectability have been developed for determination of the antifouling agent Irgarol 1051, The features of the resulting assays have been rationalized by using molecular mechanic calculations (MM2+) to correlate the chemical structure of different immunizing haptens and the corresponding avidi ties of the obtained antisera, The ability of Irgarol 1051 to compete fur the antibody binding sites with 11 horseradish peroxidase enzyme t racers, differing in the chemical structures of the hapten, has been i nvestigated, The present paper demonstrates that high-quality antibodi es and, therefore, immunoassays reaching very Bow detection limits cou ld be predicted by molecular modeling studies of the analyte conformat ions and of the immunizing haptens' geometries, hydrogen-bonding capab ilities, and electronic distributions, Two of the ELISAs obtained have been optimized to obtain reproducible immunoassays, The dynamic range s of both assays are between 30 and 200 ng/L, and the limits of detect ion are similar to 16 ng/L, The reported immunoassays have been evalua ted and validated by analyzing spiked and real seawater samples, Irgar ol 1051 has been found to be present in two of the geographical locati ons analyzed at concentration levels dependent on the time of year, Th e analytical results obtained with these immunoassays have been valida ted by chromatographic methods.