Physics

Kinetics

Enzyme

Combinatorial chemistry

Active site

Biology

Catalysis

Peroxidase

Chemistry

Ecology

Substrate (aquarium)

Horseradish peroxidase

Quantum mechanics

Biochemistry

Enzyme kinetics

Nature Catalysis

Developing artificial enzymes with the excellent catalytic performance of natural enzymes has been a long-standing goal for chemists. Single-atom catalysts with well-defined atomic structure and electronic coordination environments can effectively mimic natural enzymes. Here, we report an engineered FeN3P-centred single-atom nanozyme (FeN3P-SAzyme) that exhibits comparable peroxidase-like catalytic activity and kinetics to natural enzymes, by controlling the electronic structure of the single-atom iron active centre through the precise coordination of phosphorus and nitrogen. In particular, the engineered FeN3P-SAzyme, with well-defined geometric and electronic structures, displays catalytic performance that is consistent with Michaelis–Menten kinetics. We rationalize the origin of the high enzyme-like activity using density functional theory calculations. Finally, we demonstrate that the developed FeN3P-SAzyme with superior peroxidase-like activity can be used as an effective therapeutic strategy for inhibiting tumour cell growth in vitro and in vivo. Therefore, SAzymes show promising potential for developing artificial enzymes that have the catalytic kinetics of natural enzymes.                                                                  Nanozymes can provide cost and stability advantages over natural enzymes, but they usually display low catalytic activity and inferior kinetics. Now, a highly active nanozyme is developed that shows comparable kinetics to horseradish peroxidase in the oxidation of a commonly used artificial substrate.

Matching the kinetics of natural enzymes with a single-atom iron nanozyme