Mitchell D Nothling, Zeyun Xiao, Nicholas S Hill, Mitchell T Blyth, Ayana Bhaskaran, Marc-Antoine Sani, Andrea Espinosa-Gomez, Kevin Ngov, Jonathan White, Tim Buscher, Frances Separovic, Megan L O'Mara, Michelle L Coote, Luke A Connal
The remarkable power of enzymes to undertake catalysis frequently stems from their grouping of multiple, complementary chemical units within close proximity around the enzyme active site. Motivated by this, we report here a bioinspired surfactant catalyst that incorporates a variety of chemical functionalities common to hydrolytic enzymes. The textbook hydrolase active site, the catalytic triad, is modeled by positioning the three groups of the triad (-OH, -imidazole, and -CO2 H) on a single, trifunctional surfactant molecule...
April 2020: Science Advances