Thermal tuning of enzyme activity by magnetic heating

Enzymes are selective, specific, efficient, and more sustainable catalysts than their chemical counterparts. From an industrial perspective, multienzymatic systems to produce chemical compounds are particularly attractive since they comply with most green production principles including the minimization of wastes and their ecological footprints. However, the number of industrial processes based on the use of enzymes as catalysts remains limited. Indeed, incompatibility issues of enzymes with respect to reaction conditions or cross-reactivity are still challenging aspects that make one-pot enzyme cascade reactions hard to perform. The urgent need for more sustainable industrial processes has made different research fields, not accustomed to working together, join efforts to develop innovative technologies that could be key enabling to overcome these challenges. Among these technologies are those that seek to synergistically integrate the specific recognition and unique catalytic properties of enzymes with the size-dependent unique properties of nanoparticles. However, rather than giving a complete overview of the use of nanomaterials in biocatalysts, here it will be discussed the feasibility of triggering magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) into hotspots by remote nanoactuation for the thermal modulation of discrete enzyme molecules activity with minimal collateral heating.
The possibility of heating discrete and defined local regions within a sample offers the potential to introduce a game-changing breakthrough in industrial biocatalysis by achieving coordinated enzyme function and thus concurrent multienzyme reactions. Therefore, not only the principles behind the activation of MNPs as hotspots, but also those examples that report the selective control of enzyme activity by magnetic heating, together with the foreseen challenges for the transfer of this technology to the industry, will be discussed.