Immobilization of enzyme on a polymer surface

Abstract

We successfully immobilized enzymes onto polymer surfaces via covalent bonds between cysteine groups of the enzyme and dibromomaleimide functionalities present at the polymer surface. In this work, we used nitroreductase (NfsB) as a model enzyme molecule. The polymers were prepared by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) polymerization, resulting in surfaces with dibromomaleimide groups. NfsB variants were engineered so that each NfsB molecule only has one cysteine group on the enzyme surface. Two different NfsB constructs were studied, with cysteines at the positions of H360 and V424, respectively. A combination of sum frequency generation (SFG) vibrational and attenuated total reflectance Fourier transformed infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopies were used to deduce the orientation of the immobilized enzymes on the surface. It was found that the orientation of the immobilized enzymes is controlled by the position of the cysteine residue in the protein. The NfsB H360C construct exhibited a similar orientational behavior on the polymer surface as compared to that on the self-assembled monolayer surface, but the NsfB V424C construct showed markedly different orientations on the two surfaces.