Packaging and delivering enzymes by amorphous metal-organic frameworks

Abstract

Enzymatic catalysis in living cells enables the in-situ detection of cellular metabolites in single cells, which could contribute to early diagnosis of diseases. In this study, enzyme is packaged in amorphous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) via a one-pot co-precipitation process under ambient conditions, exhibiting 5–20 times higher apparent activity than when the enzyme is encapsulated in corresponding crystalline MOFs. Molecular simulation and cryo-electron tomography (Cryo-ET) combined with other techniques demonstrate that the mesopores generated in this disordered and fuzzy structure endow the packaged enzyme with high enzyme activity. The highly active glucose oxidase delivered by the amorphous MOF nanoparticles allows the noninvasive and facile measurement of glucose in single living cells, which can be used to distinguish between cancerous and normal cells.

“Armor‐Plating” Enzymes with Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs)

“…Whereas, in the case that the encapsulation was driven by the slow coprecipitation process where the enzymes were not involved in the nucleation, the entrapped enzymes tended to lose activity as a result of unfolding and competing coordination caused by the excess ligand, 2‐methyl imidazole. This deactivation of enzymes by a high concentration of ligand was also observed in another studies . Interestingly, these two encapsulation patterns were associated with the surface charge of the enzyme.…”

Multi‐enzyme Cascade Reactions in Metal‐organic Frameworks

“…Therefore, the immobilization of enzymes in MOFs confers biocatalysts with improved reusability, reactivity, selectivity, substrate specificity as well as stability. [26][27][28] 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.…”

Tunable Polymeric Scaffolds for Enzyme Immobilization

“…Protein-NCP hybrids have been applied to a wide range of applications, such as sensing ( Wang et al, 2016 ; Gao et al, 2017 ; Vinita et al, 2018 ; Wu et al, 2019 ; Xiong et al, 2020 ), microfluidic systems ( Hu et al, 2020 ), removal of pollutants ( Shen et al, 2019 ), photodynamic therapies ( Cheng et al, 2016 ; Li et al, 2017 ; You et al, 2019 ; He et al, 2020 ), protein delivery ( Chen et al, 2018 ; Yang et al, 2019 ; Zhang et al, 2019a ; Alyami et al, 2020 ) or even for the optimization of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) ( Sun et al, 2020 ). Undoubtedly, the nature of the ligands and metals used for the synthesis of the MOFs has a direct impact on the final structure of the hybrid and eventually on the activity of the enzyme.…”