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Updated: May 24, 2025

Investigating the Function of Coronin A in the Early Starvation Response of Dictyostelium discoideum by Aggregation Assays
Published on: June 18, 2016
Decoupling Activity and Specificity in Coronazymes.
Jiahao Ji1, Li Zuo1,2, Bishal Pokhrel1
1Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, Kent State University, Kent, OH, 44242, USA.
This study introduces novel coronazymes, artificial enzymes combining gold nanoparticles and DNA aptamers. These engineered enzymes show enhanced activity and tunable specificity, decoupling key properties for superior catalyst design.
Area of Science:
- Nanotechnology and Materials Science
- Biochemistry and Enzyme Engineering
- Chirality and Photonics
Background:
- Natural enzymes often face a trade-off between specificity and catalytic activity.
- Developing artificial enzymes with decoupled activity and specificity is a key challenge in nanotechnology.
- Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and DNA aptamers offer versatile platforms for creating novel nanozymes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To engineer and characterize coronazymes (AuNP core with DNA aptamer corona) for glucose substrates.
- To investigate the decoupling of catalytic activity and chiral specificity in these artificial enzymes.
- To explore the influence of circularly polarized light (CPL) on coronazyme chiral specificity.
Main Methods:
- Fabrication of AuNP-DNA aptamer coronazymes for glucose detection.
- Single-molecule fluorescent magnetic tweezers coupled with highly inclined and laminated optical sheet (MT-HILO) microscopy.
- Investigation of coronazyme activity with d-glucose and l-glucose.
- Assessment of long-range modulation of specificity by circularly polarized light (CPL) and chiral induced spin selectivity (CISS).
Main Results:
- Coronazymes exhibited approximately 30-fold higher catalytic activity compared to bare AuNP nanozymes.
- Chiral specificity was modulated by CPL, following the chiral induced spin selectivity (CISS) principle.
- Surprisingly, coronazymes catalyzed l-glucose more effectively than d-glucose, despite aptamer evolution for d-glucose.
Conclusions:
- Demonstrated the first artificial enzyme with activity controlled by short-range forces and chiral specificity modulated by long-range CPL.
- The decoupled design allows separate optimization of activity and specificity, surpassing natural enzyme limitations.
- This approach is pivotal for creating advanced catalysts with superior performance characteristics.
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