(512e) Nanobiocatalytic Enzyme Stabilization

The specificities of enzyme catalysts can be used in various applications such as fine-chemical synthesis, pharmaceuticals, bioremediation, biobleaching, polymerase chain reaction, protein digestion in proteomic analysis, biosensors and biofuel cells. However, the short lifetimes of enzymes often hampers their usefulness. Nanobiocatalysis, using nanostructured materials for enzyme immobilization, has gathered growing attention due to its recent successes in stabilizing the enzyme activity. This presentation will discuss recent developments of nanobiocatalysis to improve the enzyme stability by using crosslinked enzymes in mesoporous media and on nanofibers/nanotubes/nanoparticles. The approach of nanometer-scale enzyme reactors (NERs) stabilized enzymes in mesoporous media via a ship-in-a-bottle approach, which employs adsorption of enzymes followed by enzyme crosslinking via glutaraldehyde treatment. A similar approach resulted in the enzyme coating on the surface of electrospun nanofibers, which also stabilized the enzyme activity in a vivid way. Nanobiocatalytic systems with stabilized enzyme activity have been employed in various applications, including biofuel cells, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and trypsin digestion in proteomic analysis. Several successful examples of nanobiocatalytic enzyme stabilization in biosensor and biofuel cell applications will be introduced in details.