Enzyme
immobilization is very important for diverse enzyme applications.
Particularly, there is a growing need for coimmobilization of multiple
enzymes for biosensing and synthetic applications. However, it is
still challenging to coimmobilize two enzymes with desirable features,
including high immobilization yield, retention of enzymatic activity,
and low leaching. In this study, we demonstrated that a pluronic-based
nanocarrier (PNC) can be an encapsulation platform for immobilization
of various single enzymes. Since the PNC is temperature-sensitive,
a simple temperature change from 4 to 37 °C led to a substantial
size reduction and enzyme encapsulation. All six enzymes tested were
encapsulated by the PNC in high yield (∼90%) with the retained
enzymatic activity (>95%). The leaching of encapsulated enzymes
was
very minimal (<0.13% for 2 weeks). Then, we demonstrated that the
PNC can efficiently coencapsulate two enzymes, formate dehydrogenase
(FDH) and mannitol dehydrogenase (MDH), for a cascade reaction producing d-mannitol. Coencapsulation of FDH and MDH resulted in an over
10-fold increase in d-mannitol production compared to the
free mix of FDH and MDH, likely due to the enhanced local concentrations
of FDH and MDH inside the PNC.