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Gold Nanorod-Mediated Photothermal Enhancement of the Biocatalytic Activity of a Polymer-Encapsulated Enzyme
journal contribution
posted on 2017-07-10, 00:00 authored by Sirimuvva Tadepalli, Jieun Yim, Keerthana Madireddi, Jingyi Luan, Rajesh R. Naik, Srikanth SingamaneniThe
rational integration of biomolecules and functional nanostructures
can enable remote-controlled biological processes such as molecular
transport, catalysis, and molecular recognition. The photothermal
ability of plasmonic nanostructures is highly attractive for optically
modulating biomolecular processes such as biocatalysis. However, the
studies pertaining to the photothermal enhancement of enzyme activity
are mostly limited to thermophilic enzymes because of the thermal
denaturation and loss of the activity of conventional enzymes at elevated
temperatures. The lack of effective strategies for preserving the
activity of immobilized enzymes at elevated temperatures hinders the
potential use of plasmonic nanostructures as nanoheaters for the photothermal
enhancement of enzyme activity. Here, we demonstrate a simple and
highly effective strategy for stabilizing enzymes immobilized on plasmonic
nanostructures by encapsulating them through in situ polymerization. Apart from enhanced thermal and biological stability,
the encapsulation strategy provides enhancement of enzyme activity
with an external optical trigger. The encapsulation strategy demonstrated
here can be a highly attractive approach for designing remote-controlled
biomolecular reactions.