Investigations on the activity of poly(2-oxazoline) enzyme conjugates dissolved in organic solvents

•POXylation leads to solubility of 14 enzymes in chloroform, THF, and toluene.•POx PECs partly retain the enzymatic activity in water.•Several POx PECs show higher activities than native enzymes in chloroform and THF.

The use of enzymes in organic solvents offers a great opportunity for the highly selective synthesis of complex organic compounds. In this study we investigate the POXylation of several enzymes with different polyoxazolines ranging from the hydrophilic poly(2-methyl-oxazoline) (PMOx) to the hydrophobic poly(2-heptyl-oxazoline) (PHeptOx). As reported previously on the examples of model enzymes POXylation mediated by pyromellitic acid dianhydride results in highly modified, organosoluble protein conjugates. This procedure is here extended to a larger number of proteins and optimized for the different polyoxazolines. The resulting polymer-enzyme conjugates (PEC) became soluble in different organic solvents ranging from hydrophilic DMF to even toluene. These conjugates were characterized regarding their solubility and especially their activity in organic solvents and in some cases the PECs showed significantly (up to 153,000 fold) higher activities than the respective native enzymes.

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