Catalasomes: Switchable, Programmable Catalytic Nanoreactors

有机分子的合成是我们在现代世界所依赖的许多材料生产的核心，从药品到精细化学品和先进材料。然而，综合的过程，使用一个“工具箱”的技术，以一种久经考验的顺序应用，几十年来并没有发生根本性的变化：我们增加了许多工具，但工具箱本身本质上仍然与20世纪上半叶一样。这种方法的一个根本缺点是设计、测试和交付一个复杂目标的新合成所涉及的时间，这可能需要几个月到几年的时间才能实现。如何利用纳米技术从根本上改变这种状况？展望未来，人们可以设想一种使用小型假想的“通用分子合成器”（UMS）生产复杂分子的新方法，该方法通过进化算法与预测建模和实时反应分析的反馈相结合，快速迭代到最佳合成方法。显然，这种“颠覆性技术”的交付在未来还有相当长的路要走，但我们至少可以问：我们如何迈出实现这一目标的第一步？更具体地说：UMS的关键功能组件是什么？我们认为，研究的主要候选者是一种合成结构，它融合无机和生物成分，产生可切换的、可编程的催化纳米反应器：“催化体”；实际上是一个合成的细胞器。在这个简短的原理验证研究中，我们的目标是提供过氧化氢体的功能示例，并表明给定反应的最终产物不是由存在的试剂或它们的添加顺序决定的，就像在经典合成中那样，而是由包含多个过氧化氢体的系统的编程决定的。

The synthesis of organic molecules lies at the heart of the production of many of the materials that we rely on in the modern world, from pharmaceuticals through to fine chemicals and advanced materials. However, the process of synthesis, employing a 'toolbox' of techniques, applied in a tried and-tested order has not changed radically for many decades: we have added many tools, but the toolbox itself remains essentially the same as it was in first half of the twentieth century. A fundamental drawback with this approach is the time involved in designing, testing and delivering a new synthesis of a complex target, which can take from take months to years to achieve. How can nanotechnology be used to fundamentally change this? Future gazing allows one to envisage a new way of producing complex molecules using small, hypothetical 'Universal Molecular Synthesisers' (UMS) that iterate rapidly to the best synthetic approach via evolutionary algorithms coupled with predictive modelling and feedback from real-time reaction analysis. Clearly the delivery of this 'disruptive technology' lies some considerable way in the future, but we can at least ask: how do we take the first steps towards this goal? More specifically: what would be the key functional components of a UMS? We believe a prime candidate for investigation is a synthetic construct that fuses inorganic and biological components to produce a switchable, programmable catalytic nanoreactor: the "catalasome"; effectively a synthetic organelle. In this short proof-of-principle study we aim deliver functioning examples of catalasomes and show that the eventual product from a given reaction can be determined not by the reagents present or their order of addition, as would be the case in classic synthesis, but rather by the programming of a multiple-catalasome containing system.