Abstract
While microbial cells have emerged as a versatile platform for the synthesis of metal nanoparticles, their application for the production of single-atom catalysts (SACs) has been rarely studied yet. Here, we develop a facile method for the ambient synthesis of SACs with a high loading of >4.0 wt% by in-situ reduction of metal ions on the cells overexpressing a catalytically active enzyme, producing chemo-bio bifunctional catalysts (SAC@cell). Computational investigations unlock that the coordination between SACs and the oxygen atoms on cell surface is responsible for SAC formation. The alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH)-overexpressed cells growing with single-atom palladium (SA-Pd) as a heterogeneous catalyst (SA-Pd@cell-ADH) demonstrate high regio- and enantio-selectivity in the fully asymmetric reduction of α,β-unsaturated enones, a challenging transformation for single metal- and bio-catalysts. Silica-coating is also conducted on cell surfaces to enhance the stability and reusability of the chemo-bio hybrids. This work presents the versatility of microbial cells for the fabrication of SACs and metal-enzyme integrated catalysts.
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The data generated in this study are available in the Main Text/ Supplementary Information/Source Data file, and from the corresponding author(s) upon request. The molecular dynamics simulation data used in this study are available in the Supplementary Data 1. Source data are provided with this paper.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2023YFA0914500, Y.Jiang), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 22378096, Y. Liu; 22178083, Y. Jiang), the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (B2022202014, Y. Jiang; B2023202014, Y. Liu; B2025108010, W. Kong), and the Educational Commission of Hebei Province (JZX2023012, Y. Jiang).
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Y.L. and X.Y. supervised the project. X.Y., Y.L., Y.Z., and Y.J. conceived the idea. Y.Z., R.Z., and X.Y. participated in the preparation and performance analysis of the catalyst. W.K. and S.Z. performed the protein design with technical help from L.Z. and J.G. Y.Z., X.Y., and Y.L. co-wrote the paper.
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Zhang, Y., Yue, X., Zhang, S. et al. Ambient synthesis of single-atom catalysts on catalytically active cells for chemoenzymatic cascades. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69812-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69812-3
