Nanotechnology to Sense and Program Biocatalysis

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Approximately 10^20 chemical reactions occur in our bodies every second, most of which are facilitated by enzymes – nature's biocatalysts. Therefore, ability to sense enzymes in their active states opens new avenues for early disease detection, while the capacity to modulate their activity enables the development of next-generation therapeutics. Beyond their biological roles, enzymes are also indispensable in biotechnology, where the global enzyme market is valued at nearly $15 billion. Thus, strategies for precisely controlling enzyme activity hold transformative potential across medicine, biotechnology, and industry. 

Our laboratory develops nanoscale tools to establish programmable strategies for sensing and controlling biocatalytic activity. Specifically, we design multifunctional nanostructures to detect proteases, a class of enzymes frequently dysregulated in cancer, neurodegenerative disorders, and infectious diseases, with the goal of creating minimally invasive platforms for early diagnosis. In parallel, we are developing nanomaterials that bind to enzymes and tune their
biocatalytic activity, enhancing it by more than 20-fold in some cases, without the need for modifying the enzymes’ amino acid sequences.
 

Together, our work establishes a unified framework for sensing and regulating enzyme biocatalysis, with the power of designer nanomaterials. These advances provide powerful new approaches for chemical synthesis, precision diagnostics, and synthetic biology, with far-reaching applications in industrial catalysis, biotechnology and medicine.