Vmh2 hydrophobin as a tool for the development of "self-immobilizing" enzymes for biosensing

Self-assembling proteins forming amyloid fibrils are promising candidates for the fabrication of biomaterials, due to the chemical and mechanical stability of their structures. Among potential applications, their use as platforms for enzyme immobilization is rapidly gathering attention. In this work, we demonstrate that the production of the enzyme glutathione-S-transferase (GST) fused to the class I hydrophobin Vmh2 from Pleurotus ostreatus represents an invaluable tool for the development of self-immobilizing enzymes useful for high throughput analyses. The proposed immobilization strategy is versatile since it can be applied, in principle, to every recombinant protein able to refold from Escherichia coli inclusion bodies. A GST based biosensor has been developed to quantify toxic compounds, such as the pesticides molinate and captan, in aqueous environmental samples. The main advantages of this sensor include simplicity and speed of preparation, high sensitivity, reusability, and accuracy.