Copper Based Biomimetic Catalysts of Catechol Oxidase: An Overview on Recent Trends

The trend of modelling native enzymes is increasing day by day with the motive of mechanistic elucidation of enzyme-catalyzed reactions and the efficiency of catalysts. Most of the metalloenzymes are capable to activate molecular oxygen due to the presence of metal ions. Among these, copper-based metalloenzyme catechol oxidase has an attractive feature of its oxidizing ability to generate ortho-quinones from catechol. Moreover, the conversion of catechol to ortho-quinones is an important tool for the determination of hormonally active catecholamines such as adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopa. Nevertheless, the use of native enzymes is highly expensive and the employment of biomimetic models can be the best alternative. This review summarizes some of the widely used modelling methods and their successful applications. Additionally, we also briefly elucidated the structure–activity relationship, kinetic studies of the catalytic oxidation of the substrate, and different external factors influencing the catalytic cycle such as pH, temperature, etc.