The Institute of chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has made important progress in the artificial simulation of mitochondrial function

Taking active biomacromolecules as building units and using molecular assembly strategy, a multi-level assembly with the function of life-like units is constructed to reveal and regulate the basic life activity process, which has become the cross research frontier in the fields of chemistry, materials and life sciences Oxidative phosphorylation is a process in which biological organic molecules, such as sugar, lipid and amino acid, drive the production of biological energy molecule ATP through oxidative decomposition It is an important basis for energy transformation and chemical synthesis of eukaryotic cells in nature Oxidative phosphorylation is generally carried out in the mitochondrial inner membrane with multi-level structure, which requires the collaborative participation of a variety of active biological macromolecules (including ATP synthases), through a series of electron and proton transfer, and finally ATP is produced For a long time, it has been a challenging problem to construct mitochondrial like assemblies in vitro With the support of NSFC, the Ministry of science and technology and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Li junbai research team of the Institute of chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been committed to the molecular assembly and Application Research of active biological macromolecular ATPase for a long time, and has made a series of progress They integrated ATPase with photosystem II, photoacid molecules or quantum dots by using molecular co assembly technology, effectively simulated the multistage structure of chloroplasts in nature, and significantly improved their photosynthesis function (ACS Nano 2016, 10, 556; ACS Nano 2017, 11, 10175; ACS Nano 2018, 12, 1455; adv funct Mater 2018, 28, 1706557; angel Chem Int Ed 2017 ,   56 ,12903;   Angew Chem Int Ed 2018 , 57 , 6532; Angew Chem Int Ed 2019 , 58 , 796 ）。 In addition, they used self-assembly monolayer technology to control the kinetics of transmembrane proton gradient formation, and realized the regulation of ATP synthesis rate catalyzed by ATPase in vitro (angelw Chem Int ed 2019, 58, 1110) Based on the above research work, Li junbai's research team recently obtained hollow mesoporous silica particles with gold nanoparticles by using the removable template method, combined with interface chemical modification and regulation, and then recombined ATPase on its surface to construct a multi-level assembly with mitochondrial like function The results show that gold nanoparticles can catalyze the cascade reaction, convert glucose to gluconic acid, and then generate the transmembrane proton gradient potential, which drives the ATPase to catalyze the synthesis of ATP The assembly system effectively simulates the oxidative phosphorylation process of natural mitochondria, and the efficiency of ATP synthesis is equivalent to that of natural mitochondria The establishment of the above system has opened up a new way for bioenergy conversion, and has important implications for the construction of multi-level structure of life-like unit assembly using artificial nano enzyme Relevant research results were published in angew Chem Int ed (angew Chem Int ed 2019, 58, 5572-5576).