Immobilization of two organometallic complexes into a single cage to construct protein-based microcompartments.

Natural protein-based microcompartments containing multiple enzymes promote cascade reactions within cells. We use the apo-ferritin protein cage to mimic such biocompartments by immobilizing two organometallic Ir and Pd complexes into the single protein cage. Precise locations of the metals and their accumulation mechanism were studied by X-ray crystallography.