Three-Dimensional Printable Enzymatically Active Plastics

Here we describe a facile route to the synthesis of enzymatically active highly fabricable plastics, where the enzyme is an intrinsic component of the material. This is facilitated by the formation of an electrostatically-stabilized enzyme-polymer surfactant nanoconstruct, which after lyophilization and melting, affords stable macromolecular dispersions in a wide range of organic solvents. A selection of plastics can then be co-dissolved in the dispersions, which provides a route to bespoke 3D enzyme-plastic nanocomposite structures using a wide range of fabrication techniques, including melt electrowriting (MEW), casting, and piston-assisted microsyringe (PAM2) 3D printing. The resulting constructs comprising active phosphotriesterase (arPTE) readily detoxify organophosphates with persistent activity over repeated cycles and for long time periods. Moreover, we show that the protein guest molecules, such as arPTE or sfGFP, increase the compressive Young’s modulus of the plastics, and that the identity of the biomolecule influences the nanomorphology and mechanical properties of the resulting materials. Overall, we demonstrate that these biologically active nanocomposite plastics are compatible with state-of-the-art 3D fabrication techniques and that the methodology could be readily applied to produce robust and on-demand smart nanomaterial structures.