Hydrogen-bonded lipase-hydrogel microspheres for esterification application

Lipase is the most widely used enzyme in industry. Due to its unique "lid" structure, lipase can only show high activity at the oil-water interface, which means that water is needed in the catalytic esterification process. However, the traditional lipase catalytic system cannot effectively control "micro-water" in the esterification environment, resulting in the high content of free water, which hinders the esterification reaction and reduces the yield. In this paper, a promising strategy of esterification catalyzed by polyacrylamide hydrogel immobilized lipase is reported. The porous polyacrylamide hydrogel microspheres (PHM) prepared by inverse emulsion polymerization are used as carrier to adsorb lipase by hydrogen bonding interaction. These hydrogel microspheres provide a "micro-water environment" for lipase in the anhydrous reaction system, and further provide an oil-water interface for "interface activation" of lipase. The obtained lipase-porous polyacrylamide hydrogel microspheres (L-PHMs) exhibit higher temperature and pH stability compared with free lipase, and the optimum enzymatic activity reach 1350 U/g (pH 6, 40 °C). L-PHMs can still remain about 49% of their original activity after 20 reuses. Furthermore, L-PHMs have been successfully applied to catalyze the synthesis of conjugated linoleic acid ethyl ester. The results suggest that this immobilization method opens up a new way for the application of lipase in ester synthesis.