Hydrolysis of Phosphate Esters Catalyzed by Inorganic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles Acting as Biocatalysts

Unraveling iron oxides as abiotic catalysts of organic phosphorus recycling in soil and sediment matrices

In biogeochemical phosphorus cycling, iron oxide minerals are acknowledged as strong adsorbents of inorganic and organic phosphorus. Dephosphorylation of organic phosphorus is attributed only to biological processes, but iron oxides could also catalyze this reaction. Evidence of this abiotic catalysis has relied on monitoring products in solution, thereby ignoring iron oxides as both catalysts and adsorbents. Here we apply high-resolution mass spectrometry and X-ray absorption spectroscopy to characterize dissolved and particulate phosphorus species, respectively. In soil and sediment samples reacted with ribonucleotides, we uncover the abiotic production of particulate inorganic phosphate associated specifically with iron oxides. Reactions of various organic phosphorus compounds with the different minerals identified in the environmental samples reveal up to ten-fold greater catalytic reactivities with iron oxides than with silicate and aluminosilicate minerals. Importantly, accounting for inorganic phosphate both in solution and mineral-bound, the dephosphorylarion rates of iron oxides were within reported enzymatic rates in soils. Our findings thus imply a missing abiotic axiom for organic phosphorus mineralization in phosphorus cycling.

Prussian Blue Analogues-Derived Molecularly Imprinted Nanozyme Array for Septicemia Detection

Septicemia, a severe bacterial infection, poses significant risks to human health. Early detection of septicemia by tracking specific biomarkers is crucial for a timely intervention. Herein, we developed a molecularly imprinted (MI) TiO2-Fe-CeO2 nanozyme array derived from Ce[Fe(CN)6] Prussian blue analogues (PBA), specifically targeting valine, leucine, and isoleucine, as potential indicators of septicemia. The synthesized nanozyme arrays were thoroughly characterized using various analytical techniques, including Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, field-emission scanning electron microscope, and energy-dispersive X-ray. The results confirmed their desirable physical and chemical properties, indicating their suitability for the oxidation of 3,3',5,5'-tetramethylbenzidine serving as a colorimetric probe in the presence of a persulfate oxidizing agent, further highlighting the potential of these arrays for sensitive and accurate detection applications. The MITiO2 shell selectively captures valine, leucine, and isoleucine, partially blocking the cavities for substrate access and thereby hindering the catalyzed TMB chromogenic reaction. The nanozyme array demonstrated excellent performance with linear detection ranges of 5 μM to 1 mM, 10-450 μM, and 10-450 μM for valine, leucine, and isoleucine, respectively. Notably, the corresponding limit of detection values were 0.69, 1.46, and 2.76 μM, respectively. The colorimetric assay exhibited outstanding selectivity, reproducibility, and performance in the detection of analytes in blood samples, including C-reactive protein at a concentration of 61 mg/L, procalcitonin at 870 ng/dL, and the presence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria. The utilization of Ce[Fe(CN)6]-derived MITiO2-Fe-CeO2 nanozyme arrays holds considerable potential in the field of septicemia detection. This approach offers a sensitive and specific method for early diagnosis and intervention, thereby contributing to improved patient outcomes.

Unveiling the role of inorganic nanoparticles in Earth's biochemical evolution through electron transfer dynamics

This article explores the intricate interplay between inorganic nanoparticles and Earth's biochemical history, with a focus on their electron transfer properties. It reveals how iron oxide and sulfide nanoparticles, as examples of inorganic nanoparticles, exhibit oxidoreductase activity similar to proteins. Termed "life fossil oxidoreductases," these inorganic enzymes influence redox reactions, detoxification processes, and nutrient cycling in early Earth environments. By emphasizing the structural configuration of nanoparticles and their electron conformation, including oxygen defects and metal vacancies, especially electron hopping, the article provides a foundation for understanding inorganic enzyme mechanisms. This approach, rooted in physics, underscores that life's origin and evolution are governed by electron transfer principles within the framework of chemical equilibrium. Today, these nanoparticles serve as vital biocatalysts in natural ecosystems, participating in critical reactions for ecosystem health. The research highlights their enduring impact on Earth's history, shaping ecosystems and interacting with protein metal centers through shared electron transfer dynamics, offering insights into early life processes and adaptations.

Inorganic Fe-O and Fe-S oxidoreductases: paradigms for prebiotic chemistry and the evolution of enzymatic activity in biology

Oxidoreductases play crucial roles in electron transfer during biological redox reactions. These reactions are not exclusive to protein-based biocatalysts; nano-size (<100 nm), fine-grained inorganic colloids, such as iron oxides and sulfides, also participate. These nanocolloids exhibit intrinsic redox activity and possess direct electron transfer capacities comparable to their biological counterparts. The unique metal ion architecture of these nanocolloids, including electron configurations, coordination environment, electron conductivity, and the ability to promote spontaneous electron hopping, contributes to their transfer capabilities. Nano-size inorganic colloids are believed to be among the earliest 'oxidoreductases' to have 'evolved' on early Earth, playing critical roles in biological systems. Representing a distinct type of biocatalysts alongside metalloproteins, these nanoparticles offer an early alternative to protein-based oxidoreductase activity. While the roles of inorganic nano-sized catalysts in current Earth ecosystems are intuitively significant, they remain poorly understood and underestimated. Their contribution to chemical reactions and biogeochemical cycles likely helped shape and maintain the balance of our planet's ecosystems. However, their potential applications in biomedical, agricultural, and environmental protection sectors have not been fully explored or exploited. This review examines the structure, properties, and mechanisms of such catalysts from a material's evolutionary standpoint, aiming to raise awareness of their potential to provide innovative solutions to some of Earth's sustainability challenges.

Rethinking the biotic and abiotic remineralization of complex phosphate molecules in soils and sediments

Phosphorus (P) is an essential macronutrient for all living organisms. Despite a diversity of P compounds in the environment, orthophosphate is the most bioavailable form of P. Remineralization of complex P molecules (e.g., organic P and phosphoanhydrides) into orthophosphate is traditionally considered to be carried out primarily by enzymes. Natural minerals are recently viewed to be abiotic catalysts (as compared to the organic phosphatases) to facilitate the cleavage of terminal P-O-C/P bonds and remineralization of complex P compounds. However, quantitative comparison between biotic and abiotic remineralization pathways of complex P molecules is still missing, impeding our capability to assess the importance and contribution of abiotic P remineralization in the environment. This study compares the hydrolysis rates of six organic phosphates and three inorganic phosphoanhydrides by representative enzymes (acid and alkaline phosphatases) and natural oxide minerals (hematite, birnessite, and boehmite). The results show that enzymes and minerals have different substrate preferences. Specifically, alkaline phosphatase hydrolyzes phosphate monoesters faster than phosphoanhydrides, whereas acid phosphatase and minerals show higher hydrolysis rates toward phosphoanhydrides than phosphate monoesters. Although the hydrolysis rates by enzymes (~μM hr^-1) are orders of magnitude higher than those by minerals (~μM d^-1), normalization of the rates by the natural abundance of enzymes and minerals leads to comparable contributions of both processes in soils and sediments. These results highlight the significance of natural minerals in the remineralization of complex P compounds, a process that was traditionally overlooked but with important implications for constraining P biogeochemical cycling in the environment.

Graphene quantum dots: synthesis, properties, and applications to the development of optical and electrochemical sensors for chemical sensing

GQDs exhibits exceptional electrochemical activity owing to their active edge sites that make them very attractive for biosensing applications. However, their use in the design of new biosensing devices for application to the detection and quantification of toxins, pathogens, and clinical biomarkers has so far not investigated in detail. In this regard, herein we provide a detailed review on various methodologies employed for the synthesis of GQDs, including bottom-up and top-down approaches, with a special focus on their applications in biosensing via fluorescence, photoluminescence, chemiluminescence, electrochemiluminescence, fluorescence resonance energy transfer, and electrochemical techniques. We believe that this review will shed light on the critical issues and widen the applications of GQDs for the design of biosensors with improved analytical response for future applications. HIGHLIGHTS: • Properties of GQDs play a critical role in biosensing applications. • Synthesis of GQDs using top-down and bottom-up approaches is discussed comprehensively. • Overview of advancements in GQD-based sensors over the last decade. • Methods for the design of selective and sensitive GQD-based sensors. • Challenges and opportunities for future GQD-based sensors.

Spatiotemporal variations in phosphorus concentrations in the water and sediment of Jiaozhou Bay and sediment phosphorus release potential

Phosphorus contamination in urbanized bays has been a major concern because the bay restoration is often hindered by complex P sources and behaviors. This study examined the spatiotemporal changes of P species and exchange potential in/between the water and sediment of the Jiaozhou Bay. The results indicated that dissolved P (TDP) and inorganic P (DIP) in the water ranged from 7.8-128.7 and 1.8-14.1 μg/L, respectively; while total P (TP) in the sediment ranged from 213.4-638.7 mg/kg. The TDP and DIP concentrations in the water were high in winter and low in summer, and generally decreased from northeastern or northern areas to southwestern or southern areas mainly due to phytoplankton bloom cycles and riverine and wastewater inputs. TP in the sediment was lower in the northwestern area due to solid dilution effect by the settlement of settled coarser suspended particles. Changes in aquatic geochemical conditions from rivers to bay caused P accumulation in estuarine sediment, with higher P partition in organic fraction (40%). Compared to the estuarine sediment, higher fractions of P were associated with carbonate (34%) and iron oxide (17%) minerals in the bay sediment. Equilibrium P concentrations at zero sorption (EPC₀) were 4.1-149.8 μg/L, which was substantially higher than the DIP concentration, demonstrating P release potential from the sediment. In addition, the P release potential was high in the northeastern area while P partition coefficient or buffer intensity (K_d) was high in the northwestern area. EPC₀ was significantly positively correlated with soluble and exchangeable P in the sediment while K_d was significantly negatively correlated. These results can provide improved insights into P behaviors in an urbanized bay, particularly the P release potential and spatiotemporal change.

What are the inorganic nanozymes? Artificial or inorganic enzymes!

The research on inorganic nanozymes remains very active since the first paper on the “intrinsic peroxidase-like properties of ferromagnetic nanoparticles” was published in Nature Nanotechnology in 2007. However, there is...

The "Water Problem"(sic), the Illusory Pond and Life's Submarine Emergence-A Review

The assumption that there was a "water problem" at the emergence of life-that the Hadean Ocean was simply too wet and salty for life to have emerged in it-is here subjected to geological and experimental reality checks. The "warm little pond" that would take the place of the submarine alkaline vent theory (AVT), as recently extolled in the journal Nature, flies in the face of decades of geological, microbiological and evolutionary research and reasoning. To the present author, the evidence refuting the warm little pond scheme is overwhelming given the facts that (i) the early Earth was a water world, (ii) its all-enveloping ocean was never less than 4 km deep, (iii) there were no figurative "Icelands" or "Hawaiis", nor even an "Ontong Java" then because (iv) the solidifying magma ocean beneath was still too mushy to support such salient loadings on the oceanic crust. In place of the supposed warm little pond, we offer a well-protected mineral mound precipitated at a submarine alkaline vent as life's womb: in place of lipid membranes, we suggest peptides; we replace poisonous cyanide with ammonium and hydrazine; instead of deleterious radiation we have the appropriate life-giving redox and pH disequilibria; and in place of messy chemistry we offer the potential for life's emergence from the simplest of geochemically available molecules and ions focused at a submarine alkaline vent in the Hadean-specifically within the nano-confined flexible and redox active interlayer walls of the mixed-valent double layer oxyhydroxide mineral, fougerite/green rust comprising much of that mound.

Nonenzymatic Metabolic Reactions and Life's Origins

Prebiotic chemistry aims to explain how the biochemistry of life as we know it came to be. Most efforts in this area have focused on provisioning compounds of importance to life by multistep synthetic routes that do not resemble biochemistry. However, gaining insight into why core metabolism uses the molecules, reactions, pathways, and overall organization that it does requires us to consider molecules not only as synthetic end goals. Equally important are the dynamic processes that build them up and break them down. This perspective has led many researchers to the hypothesis that the first stage of the origin of life began with the onset of a primitive nonenzymatic version of metabolism, initially catalyzed by naturally occurring minerals and metal ions. This view of life's origins has come to be known as "metabolism first". Continuity with modern metabolism would require a primitive version of metabolism to build and break down ketoacids, sugars, amino acids, and ribonucleotides in much the same way as the pathways that do it today. This review discusses metabolic pathways of relevance to the origin of life in a manner accessible to chemists, and summarizes experiments suggesting several pathways might have their roots in prebiotic chemistry. Finally, key remaining milestones for the protometabolic hypothesis are highlighted.

Applications of Graphene Quantum Dots in Biomedical Sensors

Due to the proliferative cancer rates, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, autoimmune diseases and a plethora of infections across the globe, it is essential to introduce strategies that can rapidly and specifically detect the ultralow concentrations of relevant biomarkers, pathogens, toxins and pharmaceuticals in biological matrices. Considering these pathophysiologies, various research works have become necessary to fabricate biosensors for their early diagnosis and treatment, using nanomaterials like quantum dots (QDs). These nanomaterials effectively ameliorate the sensor performance with respect to their reproducibility, selectivity as well as sensitivity. In particular, graphene quantum dots (GQDs), which are ideally graphene fragments of nanometer size, constitute discrete features such as acting as attractive fluorophores and excellent electro-catalysts owing to their photo-stability, water-solubility, biocompatibility, non-toxicity and lucrativeness that make them favorable candidates for a wide range of novel biomedical applications. Herein, we reviewed about 300 biomedical studies reported over the last five years which entail the state of art as well as some pioneering ideas with respect to the prominent role of GQDs, especially in the development of optical, electrochemical and photoelectrochemical biosensors. Additionally, we outline the ideal properties of GQDs, their eclectic methods of synthesis, and the general principle behind several biosensing techniques.

Nanozymes: A New Disease Imaging Strategy

Nanozymes are nanomaterials with intrinsic enzyme-like properties. They can specifically catalyze substrates of natural enzymes under physiological condition with similar catalytic mechanism and kinetics. Compared to natural enzymes, nanozymes exhibit the unique advantages including high catalytic activity, low cost, high stability, easy mass production, and tunable activity. In addition, as a new type of artificial enzymes, nanozymes not only have the enzyme-like catalytic activity, but also exhibit the unique physicochemical properties of nanomaterials, such as photothermal properties, superparamagnetism, and fluorescence, etc. By combining the unique physicochemical properties and enzyme-like catalytic activities, nanozymes have been widely developed for in vitro detection and in vivo disease monitoring and treatment. Here we mainly summarized the applications of nanozymes for disease imaging and detection to explore their potential application in disease diagnosis and precision medicine.

Polyphosphate Adsorption and Hydrolysis on Aluminum Oxides

The geochemical behaviors of phosphate-containing species at mineral-water interfaces are of fundamental importance for controlling phosphorus mobility, fate, and bioavailability. This study investigates the sorption and hydrolysis of polyphosphate (a group of important long-chained phosphate molecules) on aluminum oxides in the presence of divalent metal cations (Ca²⁺, Cu²⁺, Mg²⁺, Mn²⁺, and Zn²⁺) at pH 6-8. γ-Al₂O₃ with three particle sizes (5, 35, and 70 nm) was used as an analogue of natural aluminum oxides to investigate the particle size effect. All metal cations enhanced polyphosphate hydrolysis at different levels, with Ca²⁺ showing the most significant enhancement, and the difference in the enhancement might be due to the intrinsic affinity of metal cations to polyphosphate. In the presence of Ca²⁺, the hydrolysis rate decreased with increasing mineral particle size. Solid-state ³¹P nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) revealed the main surface P species to be amorphous calcium phosphate precipitates, phosphate groups in polyphosphate that formed direct bonds with the mineral surface as inner-sphere complexes, and phosphate groups in polyphosphate that were not directly bonded to the mineral surfaces. Our results reveal the critical roles of mineral-water interface processes and divalent metal cations on controlling polyphosphate speciation and transformation and phosphorus cycling.

Abiotic phosphorus recycling from adsorbed ribonucleotides on a ferrihydrite-type mineral: Probing solution and surface species

Iron (Fe) (oxyhydr)oxide minerals, which are amongst most reactive minerals in soils and sediments, are known to exhibit strong adsorption of inorganic phosphate (P_i) and organophosphate (P_o) compounds. Beyond synthetic P_o compounds, much still remains unknown about the reactivity of these minerals to transform naturally-occurring P_o compounds to P_i, particularly with respect to solution versus surface speciation of P_o hydrolysis. To investigate this reactivity with a ferrihydrite-type mineral and ribonucleotides, we employed high-resolution liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES), Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, and molecular modeling. Kinetic experiments were conducted with the mineral (1 g L^-1) reacted with adenosine monophosphate, diphosphate, or triphosphate (respectively AMP, ADP, ATP; 50 µM). Analysis of solution organic species by LC-MS implied that only adsorption occurred with AMP and ADP but both adsorption and dephosphorylation of ATP were evident. Maximum adsorption capacities per gram of mineral were 40.6 ± 0.8 µmol AMP, 35.7 ± 1.6 µmol ADP, and 10.9 ± 1.0 µmol ATP; solution dephosphorylated by-products accounted for 15% of initial ATP. Subsequent XANES analysis of the surface species revealed that 16% of adsorbed AMP and 30% of adsorbed ATP were subjected to dephosphorylation, which was not fully quantifiable from the solution measurements. Molecular simulations predicted that ADP and ATP were complexed mainly via the phosphate groups whereas AMP binding also involved multiple hydrogen bonds with the adenosine moiety; our FTIR data confirmed these binding confirmations. Our findings thus imply that specific adsorption mechanisms dictate the recycling and subsequent trapping of P_i from ribonucleotide-like biomolecules reacted with Fe (oxyhydr)oxide minerals.

Nanomaterials with enzyme-like characteristics (nanozymes): next-generation artificial enzymes (II)

An updated comprehensive review to help researchers understand nanozymes better and in turn to advance the field.