Oxidative bioelectrocatalysis: From natural metabolic pathways to synthetic metabolons and minimal enzyme cascades

Abstract

Anodic bioelectrodes for biofuel cells are more complex than cathodic bioelectrodes for biofuel cells, because laccase and bilirubin oxidase can individually catalyze four electron reduction of oxygen to water, whereas most anodic enzymes only do a single two electron oxidation of a complex fuel (i.e. glucose oxidase oxidizing glucose to gluconolactone while generating 2 electrons of the total 24 electrons), so enzyme cascades are typically needed for complete oxidation of the fuel. This review article will discuss the lessons learned from natural metabolic pathways about multi-step oxidation and how those lessons have been applied to minimal or artificial enzyme cascades. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Biodesign for Bioenergetics--the design and engineering of electronic transfer cofactors, proteins and protein networks, edited by Ronald L. Koder and J.L. Ross Anderson.

Functionalization of MWCNTs for Bioelectrocatalysis by Bacterial Two-Domain Laccase from Catenuloplanes japonicus

“…Their active site is composed of four copper atoms coordinated by imidazole groups of histidine residues [24][25][26]. The ability of laccases to transfer electrons to oxygen to form water is widely used in bioelectrocatalysis processes aimed at manufacturing oxygen electrodes for various applications including fuel cells [13,27,28].…”

Evaluation of Electron Transfer in Electrochemical System Based on Immobilized Gold Nanoparticles and Glucose Oxidase

“…Such nanotechnology-based approaches can be applied in the design of advanced analytical systems -biosensors. 1 Biosensors are attractive due to their low-cost, relatively fast response, operational simplicity. [2][3][4] In biosensors the biological components should display high storage and operational stability.…”