Dr. Christian Goldhahn - Wood-enzyme hybrids as flow-through biocatalytic reactors

In this project we develop wood-based reactors for continuous-flow biocatalysis, based on enzyme immobilization inside the porous wood structure. For this we apply nanoparticle-mediated adsorption of the enzymes to the inner wood surface. This is a two-step process, in which gold nanoparticles form in situ on the wood cell walls, followed by impregnation with enzyme solution. The nanoparticles increase the inner surface area of wood and provide a surface with high affinity towards enzymes. Consequently, the enzymes robustly adsorb to the gold particles under retention of their catalytic activity.

The resulting wood-gold enzyme hybrids can perform biocatalytic reactions. They offer increased tolerance against unfavorable reaction conditions, such as low pH-value and high ionic strengths. Moreover, the hybrids are easily and completely removable from the reaction solution and can be reused for multiple reaction cycles. These aspects widen their range of possible applications and increases their cost-effectiveness.
Additionally, wood’s anisotropic porosity is naturally designed to enable directed transport of liquids. Hence, the wood-enzyme hybrids can act as flow-through reactors to realize continuous-flow biocatalysis. This continuous process is more efficient than equivalent batch processes. Moreover, it offers the possibility to sequentially apply several enzymes to perform multi-step reaction cascades in continuous flow. Therefore, the wood-enzyme hybrids have great potential as green bio-based alternative to conventional reactor materials.

C. Goldhahn, J. A. Taut, M. Schubert, I. Burgert, M. Chanana, Enzyme immobilization inside the porous wood structure: a natural scaffold for continuous-flow biocatalysis, RSC Adv., 2020, 10, 20608 external page Link