Department of Chemistry, KU Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200F, 3001 Leuven, Belgium.
Chem Soc Rev. 2024 Jan 2;53(1):84-136. doi: 10.1039/d3cs00195d.
Metal-oxo clusters hold great potential in several fields such as catalysis, materials science, energy storage, medicine, and biotechnology. These nanoclusters of transition metals with oxygen-based ligands have also shown promising reactivity towards several classes of biomolecules, including proteins, nucleic acids, nucleotides, sugars, and lipids. This reactivity can be leveraged to address some of the most pressing challenges we face today, from fighting various diseases, such as cancer and viral infections, to the development of sustainable and environmentally friendly energy sources. For instance, metal-oxo clusters and related materials have been shown to be effective catalysts for biomass conversion into renewable fuels and platform chemicals. Furthermore, their reactivity towards biomolecules has also attracted interest in the development of inorganic drugs and bioanalytical tools. Additionally, the structural versatility of metal-oxo clusters allows for the efficiency and selectivity of the biomolecular reactions they promote to be readily tuned, thereby providing a pathway towards reaction optimization. The properties of the catalyst can also be improved through incorporation into solid supports or by linking metal-oxo clusters together to form Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs), which have been demonstrated to be powerful heterogeneous catalysts. Therefore, this review aims to provide a comprehensive and critical analysis of the state of the art on biomolecular transformations promoted by metal-oxo clusters and their applications, with a particular focus on structure-activity relationships.
金属氧簇在催化、材料科学、储能、医学和生物技术等多个领域具有巨大的潜力。这些具有基于氧的配体的过渡金属纳米簇也表现出对几类生物分子的有前途的反应性，包括蛋白质、核酸、核苷酸、糖和脂质。这种反应性可以被利用来解决我们今天面临的一些最紧迫的挑战，从对抗各种疾病，如癌症和病毒感染，到开发可持续和环保的能源。例如，金属氧簇和相关材料已被证明是将生物质转化为可再生燃料和平台化学品的有效催化剂。此外，它们对生物分子的反应性也引起了人们对无机药物和生物分析工具的开发的兴趣。此外，金属氧簇的结构多功能性允许它们促进的生物分子反应的效率和选择性容易地进行调整，从而为反应优化提供了途径。通过将催化剂结合到固体载体中或通过将金属氧簇连接在一起形成金属有机骨架（MOFs），也可以提高催化剂的性能，已经证明 MOFs 是一种强大的多相催化剂。因此，本综述旨在对金属氧簇促进的生物分子转化及其应用的最新技术进行全面和批判性的分析，特别关注结构-活性关系。
