Thiol chemistry is a type of highly efficient chemical reactions between thiols and functional groups. During the past two decades, thiol chemistry has been widely applied in the synthesis and...
Protein nanogelsh ave found aw idev ariety of applications, ranging from biocatalysis to drug/protein delivery. However,i np ractical applications, proteinsi nn anogelsm ay suffer from enzymic hydrolysis and denaturation. Inspired by the structure and functionalities of the fowl eggshells, biomimetic mineralization of protein nanogels was studied in this research. Protein nanogelsw ith embedded porcine pancreas lipase (PPL) in the cross-linked nanostructures were synthesized throught he thiol-disulfide reactionb etween thiol-functionalized PPL and poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) with pendant pyridyl disulfide groups.T he nanogels were further reacted with reducedb ovine serum albumin( BSA) and BSAmolecules were coated on the nanogels. Mineraliza-tion of BSA leads to the synthesis of biomineralized shells on the nanogels. With the growth of CaCO 3 on the shells, the nanogels aggregate into suprastructures. Thermogravimetric analysis, XRD, dynamic light scattering, and TEM were employed to study the mechanismo ft he biomineralization process and analyze the structureso ft he mineralized nanogels. The biomineralized shells can effectively protect the PPL molecules from hydrolysis by trypsin;m eanwhile, the nanosized channels on the mineralized shells allow the transport of small-molecule substrates across the shells.B ioactivity measurements indicatet hat PPL in the nanogels maintains more than 80 %b ioactivity after biomineralization.[a] Q.
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