Cover Feature: Designing Artificial Laccase Catalysts by Introducing Substrate Oxidation Metals into Oxygen‐Reducing Metal‐Organic Frameworks: Cu‐Doped ZIF‐67 (Chem. Eur. J. 72/2024)

The Cover Feature illustrates a bioinspired metal–organic framework (MOF) that mimics the function of laccase, an enzyme involved in the hardening of traditional Japanese lacquerware. Laccase is a multicopper oxidase containing a trinuclear copper cluster responsible for oxygen reduction and a mononuclear site that oxidizes phenolic substrates, linking these reactions to achieve catalytic function. Inspired by this mechanism, we developed a MOF incorporating cobalt ions for oxygen reduction and copper ions as active sites for phenolic oxidation. This design highlights the potential of bioinspired approaches in creating artificial enzymes with complex catalytic functionalities. More information can be found in the Research Article by H. Nakahara and Y. Hitomi (DOI: 10.1002/chem.202402953).