Enzymatic bioactivity investigation of glucose oxidase modified with hydrophilic or hydrophobic polymers via in situ RAFT polymerization

Biomacromolecules, such as enzymes are widely used for biocatalysis, both at academic and industrial level, due to their high specificity and wide applications in different reaction media. Herein, taking GOx as a representative enzyme, in-situ RAFT polymerization of four different monomers including acrylic acid (AA), methyl acrylate (MA), poly (ethylene glycol) acrylate (PEG-A) and tert-butyl acrylate (TBA) were polymerized directly on the surface of GOx to afford GOx-poly (PEG-A)(GOx-PPEG-A), GOx-poly(MA)(GOx-PMA), GOx-poly(AA)(GOx-PAA), and GOx-poly(TBA)(GOx-PTBA) conjugates, respectively. Thereinto, PAA and PPEG-A represent the hydrophilic polymers, while PMA and PTBA stand for the hydrophobic ones. Effects of different polymer on the properties of GOx were investigated by measuring the bioactivity and stability of the as-prepared and different GOx-polymer conjugates. Higher bioactivity was obtained for GOx modified with hydrophilic polymers compared with that modified with hydrophobic ones. All the tested polymers can enhance the stability of the GOx, while the hydrophobic GOx-polymers conjugates exhibited much better stability than the hydrophilic ones. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2017, 55, 1289–1293