Biomimetic Mineralization of Large Enzymes Utilizing a Stable Zirconium-Based Metal-Organic Frameworks

Enzymes are natural catalysts for a wide range of metabolic chemical transformations, including selective hydrolysis, oxidation, and phosphorylation. Herein, we demonstrate a strategy for the encapsulation of enzymes within a highly stable zirconium-based metal-organic framework. UiO-66-F4 was synthesized under mild conditions using an enzyme-compatible amino acid modulator, serine, at a modest temperature in an aqueous solution. Enzyme@UiO-66-F4 biocomposites were then formed by an in situ encapsulation route in which UiO-66-F4 grows around the enzymes and, consequently, provides protection for the enzymes. A range of enzymes, namely, lysozyme, horseradish peroxidase, and amano lipase, were successfully encapsulated within UiO-66-F4. We further demonstrate that the resulting biocomposites are stable under conditions that could denature many enzymes. Horseradish peroxidase encapsulated within UiO-66-F4 maintained its biological activity even after being treated with the proteolytic enzyme pepsin and heated at 60 °C. This strategy expands the toolbox of potential metal-organic frameworks with different topologies or functionalities that can be used as enzyme encapsulation hosts. We also demonstrate that this versatile process of in situ encapsulation of enzymes under mild conditions (i.e., submerged in water and at a modest temperature) can be generalized to encapsulate enzymes of various sizes within UiO-66-F4 while protecting them from harsh conditions (i.e., high temperatures, contact with denaturants or organic solvents).

Confining enzymes in porous organic frameworks: from synthetic strategy and characterization to healthcare applications

Enzymes are a class of natural catalysts with high efficiency, specificity, and selectivity unmatched by their synthetic counterparts and dictate a myriad of reactions that constitute various cascades in living cells. The development of suitable supports is significant for the immobilization of structurally flexible enzymes, enabling biomimetic transformation in the extracellular environment. Accordingly, porous organic frameworks, including metal organic frameworks (MOFs), covalent organic frameworks (COFs) and hydrogen-bonded organic frameworks (HOFs), have emerged as ideal supports for the immobilization of enzymes because of their structural features including ultrahigh surface area, tailorable porosity, and versatile framework compositions. Specially, organic framework-encased enzymes have shown significant enhancement in stability and reusability, and their tailorable pore opening provides a gatekeeper-like effect for guest sieving, which is beneficial for mimicking intracellular biocatalysis processes. This immobilization technique brings new insight into the development of next-generation enzyme materials and shows huge potential in healthcare applications, such as biomarker diagnosis, biostorage, and cancer and antibacterial therapies. In this review, we describe the state-of-the-art strategies for the structural immobilization of enzymes using the well-explored MOFs and burgeoning COFs and HOFs as scaffolds, with special emphasis on how these porous framework-confined technologies can provide a favorable microenvironment for mimicking natural biocatalysis. Subsequently, advanced characterization techniques for enzyme conformation, the effect of the confined microenvironment on the activity of enzymes, and the emerging healthcare applications will be surveyed.

Biocatalytic Metal-Organic Framework: Promising Materials for Biosensing

The high-efficient and specific catalysis of enzyme allow it to recognize a myriad of substrate that impels the biosensing. Nevertheless, the fragility of natural enzymes severely restricts their practical applications. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with porous network and attractive functions have been intelligently employed as supports to encase enzymes for protecting them against hash environments. More importantly, the customizable construction and composition affords the intrinsic enzyme-like activity of some MOFs (known as nanozymes), which provides an alternative guideline to construct robust enzymes mimics. Herein, this review will introduce the concept of these biocatalytic MOFs, with the special emphasis on how the biocatalytic processes operated in these MOFs materials can reverse the plight of native enzymes-based biosensing. In addition, the present challenges and future outlooks in this research field are briefly put forward.

Metal-Organic Frameworks: A New Platform for Enzyme Immobilization

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) with attractive properties such as high surface area, tunable porosity, designable functionality and excellent stability, have aroused great interest from researchers as the matrices for enzyme immobilization. Recently, several efficient strategies including surface immobilization, post-synthetic infiltration and in situ encapsulation have been explored. MOF-immobilized enzymes, named enzymes@MOFs, show remarkably enhanced stability and recyclability, accelerating cell-free biocatalysis in diverse applications. This concept will impart the typical strategies for enzyme immobilization with MOFs, and their potential applications.

Tracing compartment exchange by NMR diffusometry: Water in lithium-exchanged low-silica X zeolites

The two-region model for analyzing signal attenuation in pulsed field gradient (PFG) NMR diffusion studies with molecules in compartmented media implies that, on their trajectory, molecules get from one region (one type of compartment) into the other one with a constant (i.e. a time-invariant) probability. This pattern has proved to serve as a good approach for considering guest diffusion in beds of nanoporous host materials, with the two regions ("compartments") identified as the intra- and intercrystalline pore spaces. It is obvious, however, that the requirements of the application of the two-region model are not strictly fulfilled given the correlation between the covered diffusion path lengths in the intracrystalline pore space and the probability of molecular "escape" from the individual crystallites. On considering water diffusion in lithium-exchanged low-silica X zeolite, we are now assuming a different position since this type of material is known to offer "traps" in the trajectories of the water molecules. Now, on attributing the water molecules in the traps and outside of the traps to these two types of regions, we perfectly comply with the requirements of the two-region model. We do, moreover, benefit from the option of high-resolution measurements owing to the combination of magic angle spinning (MAS) with PFG NMR. Data analysis via the two-region model under inclusion of the influence of nuclear magnetic relaxation yields satisfactory agreement between experimental evidence and theoretical estimates. Limitations in accuracy are shown to result from the fact that mass transfer outside of the traps is too complicated for being adequately reflected by simple Fick's laws with but one diffusivity.

Probing sol-gel matrices microenvironments by PGSE HR-MAS NMR

We applied Pulsed Gradient Spin Echo diffusion with high-resolution magic angle spinning NMR to study sol-gel matrices used to encapsulate enzymes for biocatalysis (TMOS/MTMS and TMOS/BTMS) to gain insight into the local chemical microenvironment. Transport properties of solvents with different polarities (1-pentanol, acetonitrile and n-hexane) were studied through their apparent self-diffusion coefficients. The spin echo attenuation of the solvents shows two distinct diffusion domains, one with fast diffusion (D_fast ) associated with interparticle diffusion and another with slow diffusion (D_slow ) corresponding to the displacement inside the pores within the sol-gel particles. The analysis of the root mean square displacements at different diffusion times showed that the D_fast domain has a free diffusion regime in both matrices (the root mean square displacement is linearly dependent of the diffusion time), while the D_slow domain shows a different regime that depends on the matrix. We investigated the exchange regime between the two diffusion sites. In both matrices, n-hexane was in intermediate exchange between diffusion domains, while the polar solvents were in slow exchange in TMOS/BTMS and in intermediate exchange in TMOS/MTMS. Data were fitted for TMOS/BTMS with the Kärger model, and the physical parameters were obtained. The results add to the evidence that the pores are a hydrophobic environment but that the presence of some free hydrophilic groups inside the pore, as observed in the TMOS/BTMS, has a key role in slowing down the exchange of polar solvents and that this is relevant to explain previously reported enzyme activity in these materials. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.