Abstract
Although enzymes are efficient catalysts capable of converting various substrates into desired products with high specificity under mild conditions, their effectiveness as catalysts is substantially reduced when substrates are poorly water-soluble. In this study, to expedite the enzymatic conversion of a hydrophobic substrate, we use a bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gel (bijel) which provides large interfacial area between two immiscible liquids: oil and water. Using lipase-catalyzed hydrolysis of tributyrin as a model reaction in a batch mode, we show that bijels can be used as media to enable enzymatic reaction. The bijel system gives a four-fold increase in the initial reaction rate in comparison to a stirred biphasic medium. Our results demonstrate that bijels are powerful biphasic reaction media to accelerate enzymatic reactions with various hydrophobic reagents. This work also demonstrates that bijels can potentially be used as reaction media to enable continuous reactive separations.
Highlights
A new class of biphasic liquid mixture known as bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gel has been introduced
We show that the bijel fiber with the smallest domains and highest interfacial area leads to the highest rate of enzymatic conversion of tributyrin
To employ the solvent transfer-induced phase separation (STRIPS) bijel fiber for the conversion of tributyrin (Fig. 1), we added this substrate in the oil phase
Summary
A new class of biphasic liquid mixture known as bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gel (bijel) has been introduced. The first examples of bijels were produced by arresting thermally quenched mixtures of oil and water, a recent study has demonstrated that bijels can be continuously produced using a wide variety of oil and nanoparticles by solvent transfer-induced phase separation (STRIPS). This method enables continuous fabrication of bijels in diverse formats (nanoparticle, fiber, and membrane), potentially enabling various applications in biphasic chemical processes (Fig. 1)[30]. When compared to a conventional biphasic system that has been used to induce conversion of hydrophobic substrates, the bijel system gives almost four-fold increase in the initial reaction rate, demonstrating that the bijel can potentially be used as a biphasic medium for the continuous enzymatic conversion of hydrophobic substances
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