Artificial heme enzymes for the construction of gold-based biomaterials

Many efforts are continuously devoted to the construction of hybrid biomaterials for specific applications, by immobilizing enzymes on different types of surfaces and/or nanomaterials. In addition, advances in computational, molecular and structural biology have led to a variety of strategies for designing and engineering artificial enzymes with defined catalytic properties. Here, we report the conjugation of an artificial heme enzyme (MIMO) with lipoic acid (LA) as a building block for the development of gold-based biomaterials. We show that the artificial MIMO@LA can be successfully conjugated to gold nanoparticles or immobilized onto gold electrode surfaces, displaying quasi-reversible redox properties and peroxidase activity. The results of this work open interesting perspectives toward the development of new totally-synthetic catalytic biomaterials for application in biotechnology and biomedicine, expanding the range of the biomolecular component aside from traditional native enzymes.