Abstract
Immobilization of biomolecules into porous materials could lead to significantly enhanced performance in terms of stability towards harsh reaction conditions and easier separation for their reuse. Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs), offering unique structural features, have emerged as a promising platform for immobilizing large biomolecules. Although many indirect methods have been used to investigate the immobilized biomolecules for diverse applications, understanding their spatial arrangement in the pores of MOFs is still preliminary due to the difficulties in directly monitoring their conformations. To gain insights into the spatial arrangement of biomolecules within the nanopores. We used in situ small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) to probe deuterated green fluorescent protein (d-GFP) entrapped in a mesoporous MOF. Our work revealed that GFP molecules are spatially arranged in adjacent nanosized cavities of MOF-919 to form “assembly” through adsorbate-adsorbate interactions across pore apertures. Our findings, therefore, lay a crucial foundation for the identification of proteins structural basics under confinement environment of MOFs.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 973 |
| Journal | Nature Communications |
| Volume | 14 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2023 |
Funding
The authors acknowledge the financial support from the US National Science Foundation (DMR-1352065) and the Robert A. Welch Foundation (B-0027). The SANS experiments were performed using beamlines of Bio-SANS (CG3) and GP-SANS (CG2) at the High Flux Isotope Reactor in ORNL and NG 7-SANS instrument in NIST. Neutron scattering experiments on Bio-SANS were supported by the Center for Structural Molecular Biology funded by DOE Biological and Environmental Research (project ERKP291). A portion of this research used resources at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Access to VSANS was provided by the Center for High Resolution Neutron Scattering, a partnership between the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation under Agreement No. DMR-2010792. Partial support from the Researchers Supporting Program project no (RSP2023R55) at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is also acknowledged (A.M.A.). We appreciate Prof. Hexiang Deng and Gaoli Hu for generously providing the MOF-919 material. Disclaimer: The identification of any commercial product or trade name does not imply endorsement or recommendation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The authors acknowledge the financial support from the US National Science Foundation (DMR-1352065) and the Robert A. Welch Foundation (B-0027). The SANS experiments were performed using beamlines of Bio-SANS (CG3) and GP-SANS (CG2) at the High Flux Isotope Reactor in ORNL and NG 7-SANS instrument in NIST. Neutron scattering experiments on Bio-SANS were supported by the Center for Structural Molecular Biology funded by DOE Biological and Environmental Research (project ERKP291). A portion of this research used resources at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Access to VSANS was provided by the Center for High Resolution Neutron Scattering, a partnership between the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation under Agreement No. DMR-2010792. Partial support from the Researchers Supporting Program project no (RSP2023R55) at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is also acknowledged (A.M.A.). We appreciate Prof. Hexiang Deng and Gaoli Hu for generously providing the MOF-919 material. Disclaimer: The identification of any commercial product or trade name does not imply endorsement or recommendation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.