Metal‐Organic Frameworks: A New Platform for Enzyme Immobilization

Abstract

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.

Multi‐enzyme Cascade Reactions in Metal‐organic Frameworks

“…The general synthetic strategies of enzymes incorporation within MOF are bioconjugation, infiltration, or biomineralization/coprecipitation. [29][30][31] However, the immobilized multi-enzyme systems in MOF cannot guarantee enhanced overall activity, due to enzyme leaching, structural changes or autolysis inevitably occur during the immobilization process, thereby decreasing the overall biocatalytic activity. [32,33] Commonly, multi-enzyme can be cross-linked by themselves and further linked to a single MOF particle in close proximity to minimize the diminished enzymes activity.…”

“…[54] In addition, with extraordinary chemical robustness and high enzyme encapsulation capacity of MOFs, the multi-enzyme@MOF systems allow new possibilities in artificial and hybrid cells design, enabling new potentials in cell manipulation and enzyme replacement therapy. [47,57] Although a series of review articles on the diversity of enzymatic cascades [1,[58][59][60][61][62] and their immobilization in macromolecular scaffolds have been published within the past few years, [9,18,21,22,31,[63][64][65][66][67][68][69] none has particularly focused on the immobilization strategies of multi-enzyme within MOFs and their cutting-edge applications. In this Personal Account, the most recent advances and challenges on multi-enzyme cascade reactions within MOFs, from the works by us and the work of others, are provided.…”

“…Gradually, the utilization of immobilized multi‐enzyme in MOF is being driven by environmental and economic expectation. The general synthetic strategies of enzymes incorporation within MOF are bioconjugation, infiltration, or biomineralization/coprecipitation . However, the immobilized multi‐enzyme systems in MOF cannot guarantee enhanced overall activity, due to enzyme leaching, structural changes or autolysis inevitably occur during the immobilization process, thereby decreasing the overall biocatalytic activity …”

“…Although a series of review articles on the diversity of enzymatic cascades and their immobilization in macromolecular scaffolds have been published within the past few years, none has particularly focused on the immobilization strategies of multi‐enzyme within MOFs and their cutting‐edge applications. In this Personal Account, the most recent advances and challenges on multi‐enzyme cascade reactions within MOFs, from the works by us and the work of others, are provided.…”

Magnetic COFs as satisfied support for lipase immobilization and recovery to effectively achieve the production of biodiesel by great maintenance of enzyme activity.

“…In recent years, porous materials have been developed and applied to integrate enzyme based on their excellent features of high surface area and porosity which facilitate immobilization process and preservation of biomolecules. 8 Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) with high surface area, pore channels and chemical functionality [9][10][11] has been reported to entrap lipase for biodiesel. [12][13][14] However, MOFs is chemical stability and metal toxicity unsatisfactory, since some are water-sensitive or easily digested.…”