Carbonic anhydrase-mimicking metal-organic frameworks built from amino acid and cadmium ions.

Built from L-histidine amino acid ligand and cadmium ions, two new 3D chiral metal-organic frameworks, [α-Cd(HIS)] (1) and [ß-Cd(HIS)] (2), which contain metal-histidine bonds mimicking the structure features of carbonic anhydrase, demonstrate interesting properties of catalyzing the hydrolysis of p-nitrophenylacetate (p-NPA) to para-nitrophenol (p-NP).