Enzymatic cascade reaction in simple-coacervates.

The design of enzymatic droplet-sized reactors constitutes an important challenge with many potential applications such as medical diagnostics, water purification, bioengineering, or food industry. Coacervates, which are all-aqueous droplets, afford a simple model for the investigation of enzymatic cascade reaction since the reactions occur in all-aqueous media, which preserve the enzymes integrity. However, the question relative to how the sequestration and the proximity of enzymes within the coacervates might affect their activity remains open. Herein, we report the construction of enzymatic reactors exploiting the simple coacervation of ampholyte polymer chains, stabilized with agar. We demonstrate that these coacervates have the ability to sequester enzymes such as glucose oxidase and catalase and preserve their catalytic activity. The study is carried out by analyzing the color variation induced by the reduction of resazurin. Usually, phenoxazine molecules acting as electron acceptors are used to characterize glucose oxidase activity. Resazurin (pink) undergoes a first reduction to resorufin (salmon) and then to dihydroresorufin (transparent) in presence of glucose oxidase and glucose. We have observed that resorufin is partially regenerated in the presence of catalase, which demonstrates the enzymatic cascade reaction. Studying this enzymatic cascade reaction within coacervates as reactors provide new insights into the role of the proximity, confinement towards enzymatic activity.

Self-coacervation of ampholyte polymer chains as an efficient encapsulation strategy.

Coacervation is a phase separation process involving two aqueous phases, one solute-phase and one solute-poor phase. It is frequently observed among oppositely-charged polyelectrolyte systems. In this study, we focus on self-coacervation involving a single polymer chain and investigate its potential for encapsulation applications. Negatively charged polyacrylic acid polymer chains were partially cationized using diamine and carbodiimide chemistry affording ampholytes, named PAA-DA, with tunable charge ratio. When dispersed in water, at pH 7, PAA-DA was soluble but a phase separation occurs when decreasing pH close to the isoelectric point. Coacervation is found only for a given amine-to-acid ratio otherwise precipitation is observed. Increasing the pH above 4 yielded progressive destruction of the coacervates droplets via the formation of vacuoles within droplets and subsequent full homogeneous redispersion of PAA-DA in water. However, addition of calcium allowed increasing the coacervate droplet stability upon increasing the pH to 7 as the divalent ion induced gelation within droplets. Moreover, the coacervate droplets present the ability to spontaneously sequestrate a broad panel of entities, from small molecules to macromolecules or colloids, with different charges, size and hydrophobicity. Thanks to the reversible character of the coacervates, triggered-release could be easily achieved, either by varying the pH or by removing calcium ions in the case of calcium-stabilized coacervates. Self-coacervation presents the advantage of pathway-independent preparation, offering a real output interest in pharmacy, water treatment, food science or diagnostics.