1)中国科学院地质与地球物理研究所行星科学与前沿技术重点实验室,北京 100029;2)中国科学院大学地球与行星科学学院,北京 100049
国家自然科学基金(42474099),国家自然科学基金地质联合基金项目(U2244223)和中国科学院地质与地球物理所重点部署项目(IGGCAS-202201)资助。
1)Key Laboratory of Planetary Sciences and Frontier Technology, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China;2)College of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
This work was supported by grants from The National Natural Science Foundation of China (42474099), National Natural Science Foundation of China-Geological Joint Fund (U2244223), and Key Project of Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS-202201).
氢化酶作为高效、可逆催化质子还原产氢的生物催化剂,其工业化应用长期受限于高氧敏感性、重组成熟难度大、电子传递系统效率与催化稳定性不足等问题。常用的酶固定化技术能够提高氢化酶的重复使用性,但也常伴随着工艺复杂与固定化材料生物相容性低等局限。近年来,生物封装技术通过利用生物来源的封装材料构建物理限域与化学微环境,已成为提升氢化酶催化性能的关键策略之一。本文系统综述了利用蛋白纳米基容器封装与工程化氢化酶全细胞两大类生物封装策略,在提升氢化酶耐氧性、稳定性和产氢效率方面的最新研究进展。重点阐述了病毒样衣壳、羧酶体蛋白壳等纳米蛋白笼体系,以及氢化酶细胞内部区室化封装与外部天然多糖材料的全细胞封装系统的作用机制与性能表现。研究表明,封装策略不仅有效隔离氧气、延缓酶失活,还能通过提高局部酶浓度、优化电子传递等途径显著增强氢化酶的产氢活性。然而,该技术仍面临封装效率、材料长期稳定性及光-生物界面匹配性等挑战。展望未来,通过计算机辅助设计、增强电子传递效率以及开发复合功能材料,有望推动生物封装氢化酶体系向高效、稳定、可规模化的产氢应用方向发展。
Hydrogenases, as a class of highly efficient and reversible biological catalysts, can catalyze the reduction of protons to molecular hydrogen, thus demonstrating great potential in a wide range of fields such as renewable energy production and green chemistry. Despite their significant potential, the large-scale industrial application of hydrogenases has long been constrained by several inherent limitations, including high sensitivity to molecular oxygen, the challenges in the in vitro reconstitution and maturation of their catalytic centers, and the inefficiency and instability of the natural electron transfer pathways. To overcome these limitations and enhance the catalytic performance of hydrogenases, researchers have developed various strategies, among which enzyme molecular engineering, photo-driven modification, and enzyme immobilization techniques are the most common exploration directions. Particularly, enzyme immobilization technology is widely used to improve the reusability of hydrogenases, but traditional immobilization methods often come with disadvantages in practical applications, such as complex multi-step procedures and insufficient biocompatibility of the immobilization materials. In recent years, bioencapsulation technology has emerged as a promising alternative strategy to enhance the catalytic performance of hydrogenases. This method utilizes biologically derived encapsulation materials to construct physically confined and precisely defined chemical microenvironments around the enzyme molecules, offering simpler self-assembly processes and superior biocompatibility. With these biomimetic constructs, bioencapsulation technology not only provides better oxygen tolerance but also helps to create a local microenvironment conducive to sustained catalytic function. This article systematically reviews the latest research progress of two main bioencapsulation strategies for hydrogenases: one is the encapsulation technology based on protein-based nanocages; the other is the engineering strategy for whole-cell hydrogenase expression. In the nanocage-based systems, this article focuses on the structural and functional characteristics of virus-like capsids and carboxysome protein shells, which serve as efficient enzyme encapsulation scaffolds, not only providing a stable physical barrier to prevent oxygen diffusion but also enabling high-density enzyme loading, thereby promoting substrate channeling effects and electron transfer kinetics. This article also discusses whole-cell encapsulation systems, which achieve hydrogenase compartmentalization within engineered cellular structures or by using external natural polysaccharide-based encapsulation matrices to wrap whole-cell catalysts. Bioencapsulation strategies can bring multiple synergistic benefits: they can effectively protect hydrogenases from oxygen-mediated inactivation, significantly delay the decline of catalytic activity over time, and enhance the hydrogen production rate by increasing the local concentration of active enzyme molecules and optimizing the electron transfer efficiency from redox partners to the catalytic center.Despite the significant progress made, several technical challenges remain to be addressed. The main obstacles include limited enzyme loading and encapsulation efficiency, insufficient long-term stability of encapsulation materials under operating conditions, and the need to improve the matching of the photo-biological interface in systems integrating light-harvesting components with enzymatic catalysis. Future efforts can focus on the integration of multiple technological approaches, such as using computer-aided protein design to optimize encapsulation structures, developing engineered electron transfer pathways to enhance catalytic conversion efficiency, and designing composite multifunctional materials with both structural stability and functional adaptability. These directions collectively aim to achieve efficient, stable, and scalable hydrogen production applications of bioencapsulated hydrogenase systems.
许翔,曹长乾.生物封装氢化酶催化产氢策略与挑战[J].生物化学与生物物理进展,2026,53(5):1415-1438 XU Xiang, CAO Chang-Qian. Strategies and Challenges of Hydrogen Production Catalyzed by Bioencapsulated Hydrogenase[J]. Progress in Biochemistry and Biophysics,2026,53(5):1415-1438
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