Zoe Armstrong, Austin MacRae, Mary Lenertz, Qiaobin Li, Kelley Johnson, Allison Scheiwiller, Patrick Shen, Li Feng, Mohiuddin Quadir, Zhongyu Yang
Aqueous-phase co-crystallization (also known as biomimetic mineralization or biomineralization) is a unique way to encapsulate large enzymes, enzyme clusters, and enzymes with large substrates in metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), broadening the application of MOFs as enzyme carriers. The crystallinity of resultant enzyme@MOF biocomposites, however, can be low, raising a concern about how MOF crystal packing quality affects enzyme performance upon encapsulation. The challenges to overcome this concern are (1) the limited database of enzyme performance upon biomineralization in different aqueous MOFs and (2) the difficulty in probing enzyme restriction and motion in the resultant MOF scaffolds, which are related to the local crystal packing quality/density, under the interference of the MOF backgrounds...
July 26, 2023: ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces