Letters: July 2018
Your views on the Skripal poisoning, patents before publication and Switzerland’s pesticide referendum
While I enjoyed the article on combining homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts, I was disappointed by its final paragraphs. (Chemistry World, May 2018, p48). The article discusses Gabor Somoraji’s efforts to heterogenise enzymes as if this is a new thing.
When I started grad school in the 1980s, Lemuel Wingard Jr gave me multiple books he had edited on the subject of enzyme immobilisation, which had been going on since the 1960s. One of the most beneficial uses of these hybrid catalyst systems is in glucose monitors for diabetes, which are based on immobilised glucose oxidase, along with an immobilised peroxidase or other enzyme to generate a measurable response.
While immobilised enzymes are definitely hybrid catalysts for the future, they are not new; the inorganic catalyst researchers are just now starting to catch up.
Jerome Ferrance, MRSC
Charlottesville, US