Biocatalysts at atom level: From coordination structure to medical applications

Abstract Natural enzymes have great potential applications in the fields of biomedical engineering. However, shortcomings such as high cost, environmental sensitivity, and low production limit its wide application. To solve this problem, artificial enzymes with similar properties have been proposed to replace natural enzymes. However, the catalytic activity of synthetic materials is still far from natural enzymes. As new type biocatalysts, the single-atom catalysts (SACs) with enzymes-like properties could maximize the atomic efficiency of metals via highly atomic dispersion in host materials, which contributes to ultrahigh catalytic activity. Meanwhile, Fe, Co, Mn, Ni and Cu SACs show unique coordination structure, high reproducibility and non-precious metal feature, and are also free from the limitation of catalytic reaction conditions. In this article, we highlight the recent progress on enzyme-like properties, such as peroxidase (POD) -like activity, oxidase (OXD) -like activity, and catalase (CAT) -like activity of Fe, Co, Mn, Ni and Cu SACs. Meanwhile, their potential biological applications, such as biosensors and disease treatment are also reviewed. We conceive that the review will arouse the interests of researchers in the fields of artificial enzyme as well as nanomedicine.