Natural silk fibroin as a support for enzyme immobilization

Silk fibroin derived from Bombyx mori cocoon is being developed and utilized for purposes besides traditional textile material. Fibroin can be easily made up into various forms, several of which can serve as enzyme-immobilized supports. There are numerous reports on immobilized enzymes using these forms of silk fibroin as supports in which the enzyme-immobilized fibroin membranes were characterized in detail by means of spectrophotometry, infrared spectra, NMR, ESR. Enzyme-immobilized fibroin membranes have been successfully used in several biosensors for the determinations of glucose, hydrogen peroxide and uric acid in which glucose and urate biosensors in a flow injection system were able rapidly to analyze various biosamples including human whole blood or serum.