Enzyme immobilization based on reticular framework materials: Strategy, food applications, and prospect

Enzymes, as natural catalysts, show significant catalytic efficiency and have obtained widespread applications. However, the inherent drawbacks of natural enzymes (e.g., stability and reusability) limit their applications to some extent. To address these challenges, immobilized enzyme technology has been proposed and extensively explored. Reticular framework materials (RFMs) (e.g., metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), covalent organic frameworks (COFs), and hydrogen-bonded organic frameworks (HOFs)), as promising enzyme immobilization carriers, have garnered significant attention due to their exceptional properties (such as high specific surface area, tunable porosity, and highly ordered porous structures). These characteristics render them highly promising candidates for enzyme immobilization. In this review, various strategies for the immobilization of enzyme on RFMs were comprehensively summarized and discussed, including physical adsorption, covalent linkage, diffusion, and in situ encapsulation. Then, research highlights in this field were summarized, including multi-enzyme immobilization based on RFMs, enzyme immobilization based on magnetic RFMs, and enzyme immobilization based on enzyme-mimicking RFMs. In addition, applications of enzyme immobilization based on RFMs in the fields of food industry were comprehensively summarized. Impressively, challenges and perspectives in this promising field were put forward.