Construction of graphene-based enzyme system for rapid photo-assisted proteolysis

Rapid and efficient protein digestion by sequence-specific proteases is a prerequisite and critical step in proteomics. A novel photo-assisted nanoreactor was designed and constructed for rapid protein digestion. Porous graphene-silica composite material was prepared, and trypsin molecules were further immobilized in the nanopores to construct the functional nanoreactor for protein digestion. By taking advantage of the unique response of graphene to the near infrared light, this nanoreactor can realized rapid protein digestion under near infrared laser radiation, which is much faster than the widely applied overnight in-solution digestion using free trypsin molecules. It´s expected that this work would contribute to the rapid and high throughput protein digestion in proteomics.