An Artificial Metalloenzyme (ArM) is a designer metalloprotein, not found in nature, which can catalyze desired chemical reactions.[1][2] Despite fitting into classical enzyme categories, ArMs also have potential in new-to-nature chemical reactivity like catalysing Suzuki coupling,[3]Metathesis[4] etc., which were never reported among natural enzymatic reactions.
ArMs have two main components: a protein scaffold and an artificial catalytic moiety, which, in this case, features a metal center. This class of designer biocatalysts is unique because of the potential to improve the catalytic performance through chemogenetic optimization, a parallel improvement of both the direct metal surrounding (first coordination sphere) and the protein scaffold (second coordination sphere).The second coordination sphere (protein scaffold) is easily evolvable and, in the case of ArMs, responsible for very high (stereo)selectivity.[5] With the progress in organometallic synthesis and protein engineering, more and more new kind of design of ArMs were developed, showing promising future in both academia and industrial aspects.[6]
^Leurs M, Dorn B, Wilhelm S, Manisegaran M, Tiller JC (July 2018). "Multicore Artificial Metalloenzymes Derived from Acylated Proteins as Catalysts for the Enantioselective Dihydroxylation and Epoxidation of Styrene Derivatives". Chemistry: A European Journal. 24 (42): 10859–10867. doi:10.1002/chem.201802185. PMID29808506.