Host: R. Perez-Jimenez

CORRECTION: 28TH JULY MONDAY

 Nanobiotechnology and synthetic biology are emerging disciplines that merge biology and chemistry to assemble biological machineries onto functionalized nano/micro-structured materials. Nowadays, developing of novel advanced materials is broadening the application of this discipline; however the incorporation of complex biological machineries to such materials is still an unmet need. Integration of advanced biological machineries (i.e. transcription/translation, photosynthetic or CO2 fixation systems) into nano-surfaces (i.e nanoparticles, nanotubes or nanowires) devises more complex functionalities of nanomaterials that will provide new solution for chemistry, medicine or applied life sciences. Inspired by the exquisite orchestration of biological machineries found in nature, researchers exploit them in artificial applications. This has become a reality by a multidisplinar approach that combines different areas such as protein engineering, surface chemistry and material science. Our research group has so far been focused mostly on applying multi-step biocatalytic strategies to synthetic and analytical chemistry by harnessing the exquisite selectivity of enzymes (biological catalysts) for the development of more sustainable and effective chemical processes. We pursue mimicking the spatial organization found inside the living organisms, but using ex-vivo systems supported on solid materials. To address such goal, we are interfacing chemistry and biology a) to assemble multi-enzyme cascades on porous carriers by activating such surfaces with different chemical groups that selectively immobilize the different enzymes (i.e. cofactor recycling systems integrated to redox enzymes) (1,2) b) to create synthetic scaffolds inspired in biological organizations to assemble biocatalytic cascades inside porous material with fine control of the nanometric localization of each biocatalyst and c) to create novel semi-synthetic proteins with artificial functionalities (3).