The encapsulation of pepsin by electrostatically controlled diffusion from solution into thermally evaporated fatty amine films is described and the catalytic activity of the immobilized enzyme on hemoglobin is investigated.The entrapment of proteins in different inert matrices with the aim of protecting the proteins against microbial degradation, hydrolysis, autoproteolysis, deamidation, etc.; retention of the native protein structure and accessibility of the encapsulated proteins to cofactors, substrates and redox agents is a problem of current interest especially where application in biosensors/ biocatalysis is sought. Proteins have been immobilized in phospholipid bilayers, 1 on self-assembled monolayers (SAMs), 2 in silicate sol-gels, 3 in polymer matrices, 4 in Langmuir-Blodgett films, 5 within the galleries of a-zirconium phosphates 6 as well as polymer microspheres. 7 Developing on our earlier work on the spontaneous self-organization of fatty acid salts 8 and electrostatic assembly of colloidal nanoparticles, 9,10 we show here, that the proteolytic enzyme pepsin (which occurs in the gastric juice of all mammals), can be encapsulated via electrostatic interaction in thermally evaporated fatty lipid matrices (octadecylamine, ODA) by simple immersion of the lipid film in the protein solution under extremely mild preparation conditions (Schematic 1, inset of Fig. 1). The encapsulated enzyme showed good biocatalytic activity using hemoglobin as the substrate. The biocatalytic activity was determined by estimating the amount of acidsoluble tyrosine and tryptophan residues released by reaction of the encapsulated pepsin on hemoglobin.Pepsin (molecular weight = 37400; pI ≈ 1 where pI represents the isoelectric point) 11 was obtained from Sigma Chemicals and used as received. A 10 26 M solution of pepsin was prepared in glycine-HCl buffer (0.05 M, pH 3), close to the pH value at which pepsin exhibits maximum catalytic activity. 250 and 1000 Å thick ODA (Aldrich) films were deposited by thermal evaporation on gold coated AT cut quartz crystals (for quartz crystal microgravimetry (QCM) measurements) and Si (111) substrates (for FTIR and activity measurements) in an Edwards E306A chamber. Fig. 1 shows a plot of the QCM mass uptake recorded ex situ from a 250 Å thick ODA film as a function of time of immersion in the pepsin solution. Details of the QCM measurement procedure may be obtained from our earlier reports. 9,10 It can be seen that the diffusion of pepsin into the lipid matrix is extremely rapid with maximum protein uptake being accomplished within 10 min of immersion. The small time scale for encapsulation of the enzyme in the lipid matrix is a particularly attractive feature of this approach and considerably improves upon the days to weeks timeframe required in other techniques for synthesis of such biocomposites. 3,6 At pH 3, the ODA matrix is positively charged (pK B of ODA = 10.5) while the pepsin molecules are negatively charged (pI of pepsin ≈ 1.0 ) thereby leading to attractive electrostatic interacti...