Biocatalyst and nanocatalyst integrated systems for chemical production

Abstract

The development of biotechnology has made it possible to easily design and produce enzyme as needed, providing a powerful tool for the wide application of enzymatic catalysis in the fields of pharmaceutical production, bioanalysis, food manufacturing and fine chemicals industry. Enzymes with abundant catalytic functions and high catalytic activity and stereo-selectivity in the preparation of chiral compounds in the chemical industry are expected to improve the purity of the products, shorten the production process and simplify the separation of products. The cells which containing multiple enzymes inside have the ability of accurate and highly efficient synthesis. The multi-enzyme complex in cells has the characteristics of nano-scale and multi-level construction. The nano-proximity effect, compartmentalization effect and confinement effect are the important basis of efficient enzymatic catalysis in cells. However, the direct use of cells as catalysts in industry may cause a high cost, complex interference within the multiple enzymatic reactions, limited mass transfer within cell walls, difficulty in product separation due to the emulsion effect of cells and other shortcomings. On the other hand, with the rapid progress of nanotechnology, especially nanocatalysis in recent years, inorganic nanocatalysts can catalyze abundant non-natural reactions very efficiently, and can easily realize the physical and chemical processes of electron transfer and photo-electric conversion. The combination of biocatalysts and inorganic nanocatalysts opens new possibilities to mimic the complex catalysis processes in nature, and also provides a new way for the efficient utilization of energy and matter in biochemical manufacturing. It is an emerging and promising topic in the field of catalysis and is expected to provide new catalytic technologies for the green and sustainable chemical industry. Inspired by the intracellular multi-level organization and nano-effects of biocatalytic machines of cells and based on the concept of “Simply the complexity of cells, and take the essence of cells”, we aim at extracting the key building blocks of biocatalytic machines of cells, replacing the limitations of biocatalytic processes by chemical catalysis, and then constructing simple, highly efficient and stable biocatalyst and nanocatalyst integrated systems. The biocatalyst and nanocatalyst integrated systems are expected to reproduce and even beyond the catalytic capability of cells, which would provide an innovative way to produce chemicals compared to traditional industrial biocatalysis. The project is based on the needs of sustainable development of chemical industry of China and focuses on the following major scientific issues: (1) the role of intracellular nano-effects in biocatalyst and nanocatalyst integrated systems, (2) the self-assembly principle, the adaptation mechanism and the realization strategy of industrial application of such biocatalyst and nanocatalyst integrated systems. Based on the research into the above key scientific problems, the project also targets to the following key technological challenges: (1) the massive preparation of biocatalyst and nanocatalyst integrated systems, (2) the large-scale catalytic process and reactor design using biocatalyst and nanocatalyst integrated systems as catalysts.