Coupling Two Sequential Biocatalysts with Close Proximity into Metal-Organic Frameworks for Enhanced Cascade Catalysis

The encapsulation of multiple enzyme/nanoenzyme systems within mental-organic frameworks (MOFs) shows great promise for a myriad of practical applications. Herein, two sequential biocatalysts, oxidase and hemin, were coupled together with close proximity using a bifunctional polymer, poly(1-vinylimidazole) (PVI), and encapsulated into MOFs. As a demonstration of the power of such a protocol, glucose oxidase&PVI-hemin encapsulated in ZIF-8 showed significant enhancement of bioactivity for a cascade reaction compared to its counterpart without PVI. For the colorimetric assay of glucose, it showed a low limit of detection of 0.4 mu M (S/N = 3), high selectivity, and excellent stability. Because there are numerous biocatalysts that can readily be coupled and encapsulated into MOFs, a myriad of interesting properties can be simply realized by encapsulating different sequential biocatalysts.