Abstract
The light-driven enzyme catalytic system composed of NAD(P)H regeneration and NAD(P)H-dependent enzymatic process emerges as a biomanufacturing platform for the synthesis of value-added chemicals, where the photo-responsive materials absorb solar energy to drive mass conversion. Herein, we report a photo-enzyme-membrane (PEM) catalytic system coupled with multi-enzyme cascade for ethylene glycol (EG) synthesis, in which membrane mediates energy transfer and mass conversion. Covalent organic polymer membrane as photo-membrane (PM) affords efficient NADH supply through synergistic intensification of electron transfer and proton transfer, where the bipyridine moiety mediates fast electron transfer from the generation site, and the sulfonic acid moiety facilitates proton transfer by enriching protons. Meanwhile, NADH-dependent enzyme is absorbed on PM followed by coating with a silica layer to form PEM, where the enzyme-bearing silica layer is defined as enzyme-membrane (EM). The enzymatic process is intensified by mitigating the adverse effects of PM on enzyme activity through precise regulation of EM thickness. Further, a dual-channel reactor is constructed for sustainable synthesis of EG with an initial synthesis rate of 2.43 mmol gPEM-1 h-1 by continuous supply of methanol. Our study offers an efficient and durable light-driven enzyme catalytic system for the synthesis of C2+ from C1 chemicals.
Data availability
All data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and the Supplementary Information file, or available from the corresponding authors upon request. 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, China (2022YFC2105903 by Y.J.), National Natural Science Funds of China, China (22478295 by J.S., 22122809 by J.S.), Open Funding Project of the State Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, China (2020KF-06 by J.S.), and Haihe Laboratory of Sustainable Chemical Transformations (by J.S. and Z.J.).
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Y.C., J.S., and Z.J. contributed to the conception or design of the work. J.S., and Z.J. supervised the work. Y.C. wrote the paper. S.Z. (Shaohua Zhang), J.S., and Z.J. reviewed the paper. Y.Y. (Yuhan Yang) provided the DFT data. Y.S., S.L. (Shihao Li), X.M., Y.Y. (Yang Yang), S.L. (Shusong Liu), W.L., S.Z. (Shiyi Zhu), C.T., Y.J., and M.J. provided constructive suggestions for results and discussion. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.
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Chen, Y., Sun, Y., Zhang, S. et al. Photo-enzyme-membrane for ethylene glycol synthesis. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69637-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-69637-0
