Ceren Zor and Professor Nicole Grobert were part of a team with the Department of Chemistry in Oxford, exploring using commercially available carbon-supported metal catalyst (metal/C) for direct H2-driven NAD+ reduction.
Selected metal/C catalysts were used for H2 oxidation with electrons transferred via the conductive carbon support material to an adsorbed enzyme for NAD+ reduction. Improved activity and selectivity for generating bioactive NADH under ambient reactions was observed and compared to metal/C catalysts.
The metal/C catalysts and carbon support materials were activiated on either carbon or carbon black and were characterised to probe which properties potentially influenced catalyst activity. The optimised chemo-bio catalysts were then used to supply NADH to an alcohol dehydrogenase for enantioselective (>99%ee) keytone reductions, which led to high cofactor turnover numbers and Pd and NAD+ reductase activities of 441 h-1 and 2,347 h-1.
You can read the full paper describing this new method for combining chemo- and biocatalysis on carbon support, in ChemRxiv.