Nanobiocatalysis and Its Potential Applications

Enzyme reactions with their unique selectivity can be employed in various applications, but the short lifetimes of enzymes often inhibits their practical uses. 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 consists of enzyme adsorption and crosslinking. 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, antifouling, and carbon capture. Several successful examples of nanobiocatalytic applications will be introduced in details.