Abstract
Biological enzymes are macromolecular catalysts that catalyze the biochemical reactions of the natural systems. Although each enzyme performs a particular function, however, holds several drawbacks, which limits its utilization in broad-spectrum applications. Natural enzymes require strict physiological conditions for performing catalytic functions. Their limited stability in harsh environmental conditions, the high cost of synthesis, isolation, and purification are some of the significant drawbacks. Therefore, as an alternative to natural enzymes, recently several strategies have been developed including the synthesis of molecules, complexes, and nanoparticles mimicking their intrinsic catalytic properties. Nanoparticles exhibiting the properties of an enzyme are termed as “nanozymes.” Nanozymes offer several advantages over natural enzymes, therefore, a rapid expansion of the development of artificial biocatalysts. These advantages include simple methods of synthesis, low cost, high stability, robust catalytic performance, and smooth surface modification of nanomaterials. In this context, nanozymes are tremendously being explored to establish a wide range of applications in biosensing, immunoassays, disease diagnosis and therapy, theranostics, cell/tissue growth, protection from oxidative stress, and removal of pollutants. Considering the importance of nanozymes, this article has been designed to comprehensively discuss the different enzyme-like properties, such as peroxidase, catalase, superoxide dismutase, and oxidase, exhibited by various nanoparticles.
Highlights
Recent expansions in the area of nanotechnology have led to an exponential growth in development of nanomaterials exhibiting natural enzyme-like activities (Nanozymes), possessing several advantageous merits (Wei and Wang, 2013)
It is well established that nanozymes possess several distinct advantages over natural enzymes as well as other reported artificial enzymes, they still face several limitations
The interesting plasmonic properties of noble metal nanoparticles and superparamagnetic properties of iron oxide and other magnetic nanoparticles could be developed into an efficient theranostic system
Summary
Recent expansions in the area of nanotechnology have led to an exponential growth in development of nanomaterials exhibiting natural enzyme-like activities (Nanozymes), possessing several advantageous merits (Wei and Wang, 2013). All of the studies reporting intrinsic peroxidase-like activity of iron oxide nanoparticles have shown that acidic pH (pH 4.0) is one of the fundamental requirements driving the oxidation of peroxidase substrates (TMB, OPD, ABTS), which results in corresponding colorimetric product formation used in the detection of a variety of analytes. Several other types of bimetallic and composite nanomaterials are reported to show excellent peroxidase enzyme-like activity, illustrate the growing interest and efforts for developing novel nanozymes to efficiently catalyze the biological reactions. Due to the in situ generation of hydrogen peroxide and superoxide radicals, oxidase enzyme and nanozymes imitating this oxidase activity can efficiently oxidize the colorless substrates into corresponding color products, which makes them ideal agents for detection of biological or chemical molecules. Considering the different affinities of AuNPs for ssDNA and dsDNA, and the coupling of the system with HRP, the colorimetric or chemiluminescent signals were generated, which could offer the detection of single-base-pair mismatch differentiation (Luo et al, 2010; Zheng et al, 2011)
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