Enzyme Mimics: Advances and Applications

Abstract

Enzyme mimics or artificial enzymes are a class of catalysts that have been actively pursued for decades and have heralded much interest as potentially viable alternatives to natural enzymes. Aside from having catalytic activities similar to their natural counterparts, enzyme mimics have the desired advantages of tunable structures and catalytic efficiencies, excellent tolerance to experimental conditions, lower cost, and purely synthetic routes to their preparation. Although still in the midst of development, impressive advances have already been made. Enzyme mimics have shown immense potential in the catalysis of a wide range of chemical and biological reactions, the development of chemical and biological sensing and anti-biofouling systems, and the production of pharmaceuticals and clean fuels. This Review concerns the development of various types of enzyme mimics, namely polymeric and dendrimeric, supramolecular, nanoparticulate and proteinic enzyme mimics, with an emphasis on their synthesis, catalytic properties and technical applications. It provides an introduction to enzyme mimics and a comprehensive summary of the advances and current standings of their applications, and seeks to inspire researchers to perfect the design and synthesis of enzyme mimics and to tailor their functionality for a much wider range of applications.

Carbon Nanozymes: Enzymatic Properties, Catalytic Mechanism, and Applications

“…[6][7][8] Up to now,m any synthetic compounds or materials that can recreate some function of enzymes have been designed and used in many different fields.Among them, some functional nanomaterials with intrinsic enzyme activity are defined as nanozymes. [8,14,15,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] CNMs,i ncluding fullerenes,c arbon nanotubes (CNTs), graphene,g raphene quantum dots (GQDs), and carbon quantum dots (CQDs), because of their excellent physical and chemical properties,have been regarded as rising stars in many active research fields,s uch as electronics,e nergy, catalysis,i maging,s ensing,a nd biomedicine. [8,14,15,[18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] CNMs,i ncluding fullerenes,c arbon nanotubes (CNTs), graphene,g raphene quantum dots (GQDs), and carbon quantum dots (CQDs), because of their excellent physical and chemical properties,have been regarded as rising stars in many active research fields,s uch as electronics,e nergy, catalysis,i maging,s ensing,a nd biomedicine.…”

Bioinspired Synthesis of Cu2+‐Modified Covalent Triazine Framework: A New Highly Efficient and Promising Peroxidase Mimic

“…[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] However, despite this progress, several seriousc hallenges still remain. [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] However, despite this progress, several seriousc hallenges still remain.…”

Low-Cost Nanocarbon-Based Peroxidases from Graphite and Carbon Fibers

“…Metal complexes, supramolecules and biomolecules have been extensively explored to mimic various intrinsic properties of natural enzymes [2]. Recently, nanoparticles (NPs) have attracted increasing attention because of their unique physicochemical properties, such as their comparable size to natural enzymes, high surface area to volume ratio, the presence of a large number of catalytically active sites on their surface and the availability of multifunctional reactive groups for modification and further functionalization [3,4]. In 2007, Gao et al provided the first evidence that inert ferromagnetic nanoparticles have intrinsic peroxidase-like activity [5].…”

“…In 2007, Gao et al provided the first evidence that inert ferromagnetic nanoparticles have intrinsic peroxidase-like activity [5]. So far, it has been reported over 50 kinds of nanomaterials, which possess intrinsic activity similar to enzymes, such as magnetic nanoparticles, gold nanoparticles, platinum nanoparticles, cerium oxide nanoparticles and carbon nanomaterials [2][3][4][5][6][7][8].…”