Atomic Engineering of Clusterzyme for Relieving Acute Neuroinflammation through Lattice Expansion

Natural enzymes are efficient and versatile biocatalysts but suffer in their environmental tolerance and catalytic stability. As artificial enzymes, nanozymes can improve the catalytic stability, but it is still a challenge to achieve high catalytic activity. Here, we employed atomic engineering to build the artificial enzyme named Au₂₄Ag₁ clusterzyme that hosts an ultrahigh catalytic activity as well as strong physiological stability via atom manipulation. The designed Au₂₄Ag₁ clusterzyme activates the Ag-S active site via lattice expansion in the oligomer atom layer, showing an antioxidant property 72 times higher than that of natural antioxidant Trolox. Enzyme-mimicked studies find that Au₂₄Ag₁ clusterzyme exhibits high catalase-like (CAT-like) and glutathione peroxidase-like (GPx-like) activity with a maximum reaction rate of 68.9 and 17.8 μM/min, respectively. Meanwhile, the unique catalytic landscape exhibits distinctive reactions against inflammation by inhibiting the cytokines at an early stage in the brain. Atomic engineering of clusterzymes provides a powerful and attractive platform with satisfactory atomic dispersion for tailoring biocatalysts freely at the atomic level.