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( Artificial enzyme) An artificial enzyme is a synthetic, organic molecule prepared to recreate the active site of an enzyme.

A number of artificial enzymes have been reported catalysing various reactions with rate increases up to 10³; this is nevertheless substantially lower than natural enzymes that typically causes rate increases above 10⁶. One of the pioneers in artificial enzyme reasearch is chemist Ronald Breslow.

New approaches based on amino acids or peptides as characteristic molecular moieties have led to a significant expansion of the field of artificial enzymes or enzyme mimics. For instance, recent results by the group of Rob Liskamp[1] have shown that scaffolded histidine residues can be used as mimics of certain metalloproteins and -enzymes. Especially the structural mimicry of certain copper proteins (e.g. hemocyanin, tyrosinase and catechol oxidase), containing so-called type-3 copper binding sites, has been shown. This is a significant improvement since the use of scaffolded histidine residues is one step closer to the mimicry of enzymes by biological relevant species such as amino acids and peptides[2].