Mesoporous Silica Nanoreactors for Highly Efficient Proteolysis

摘要

Protein digestion inside the nanoreactor channels of mesoporous silica(SBA-15)is reported,and evaluated by using peptide-mass mapping.Both proteases and substrates were efficiently captured within these biocom-patible nanoreactors.After 10 minutes,the mass spectrum of the protein digests released from the mesoporous-silica-based nanoreactors revealed the presence of eight peptides covering 58% of the protein sequence with an intense signal(signaloise ratio >70).In comparison,the conventional overnight in-solution digestion of proteins under otherwise identical conditions generated only three peptides(27 % sequence coverage).We propose that this order-of-magnitude increase in the pro-teolytic reaction rate is mainly attributed to two factors:substrate enrichment within mesoporous silica channels and enzyme immobilization.The surface properties and macrostructure of the mesoporous silica were studied to reveal their significant influence on proteolytic reactions.