News

The Department of Environmental Science is proud to announce that Dr Lakhveer Singh has published his paper titled, “Engineered Nanoenzymes with Multifunctional Properties for Next-Generation Biological and Environmental Applications” in Advanced Functional Materials with an impact factor of 18.50.

About the Paper:

Enzyme mimicking studies took on a new aspect as it turns out that inorganic nanomaterials could have intrinsic enzyme-like activities. The word nanozyme (nanoenzyme) was first coined to describe the ribonuclease-like activity of ligand functionalised gold nanoparticles in 2004. Since then, various research has been continued on nanomaterials with enzyme-like activity. Thus, nanoenzyme has come to describe nanomaterials with enzyme-like activity.

Abstract:

As a powerful tool, nanoenzyme electrocatalyst broadens the ways to explore bioinspired solutions to the world’s energy and environmental concerns. Efforts to fashion novel nanoenzymes or engineering nanoenzymes for effective electrode functionalisation is generating innovative, viable catalysts with high catalytic activity, low cost, high stability and versatility, and ease of production. High chemo-selectivity and broad functional group tolerance of nanoenzyme with an intrinsic enzyme-like activity make them an excellent environmental tool. The catalytic activities and kinetics of nanoenzymes that benefit the development of nanoenzyme-based energy and environmental technologies by effectual electrode functionalisation are discussed in this article. Further, deep insight on recent developments in the state-of-art of nanoenzymes either in terms of electrocatalytic redox reactions (viz. oxygen evolution reaction, oxygen reduction reaction, nitrogen reduction reaction and hydrogen evolution reaction) or environmental remediation/treatment of wastewater/or monitoring of a variety of pollutants. The complex interdependence of the physicochemical properties and catalytic characteristics of nanoenzymes are discussed, along with the exciting opportunities presented by nanomaterial-based core structures adorned with nanoparticle active-sites shell for enhanced catalytic processes. Thus, such modular architecture with multi-enzymatic potential introduces an immense scope of making its economical scale-up for multielectron-fuel or product recovery and multi-pollutant or pesticide remediation as reality.

Collaboration:

The assignment on “Engineered Nanoenzyme” was completed with the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), 291 Daehak-Ro, Yuseong-Gu, Daejeon 34141, the Republic of Korea, along with other universities.

Social and Industrial Implications:

Trends of nanoenzyme are replacing conventional enzymes, particularly in a microbial bioelectrofuel biosystem, as cheap and efficient electrocatalysts. In this account, various strategies from altering scaffold to point alteration and iterative targeted tailoring have been applied to improve the enzyme-like activity and selectivity of the artificial enzymes.

Future Plans:

Strategies need to be devised to increase the mass loading of both homogenous and heterogeneous nanoenzyme for higher current density. Though, area of nanoenzyme is in its growing stage, engineering nanoenzyme with improved catalytic performance comparable to or even higher than that of the natural enzyme is one of the most concerning issues at this moment. Besides, the future breakthrough in nanoenzyme technology will lead to the development of novel catalysts with wider applications in multiple disciplines.