Nanozymes are nanostructured artificial enzymes that have attracted great attention among researchers because of their ability to mimic relevant biological reactions carried out by their natural counterparts, but with the capability to overcome natural enzymes’ drawbacks such as low thermostability or narrow substrate scope. The promising enzyme-like properties of these systems make nanozymes excellent candidates for innovative solutions in different scientific fields such as analytical chemistry, catalysis or medicine. Thus, nanozymes with different type of activities are of special interest owing to their versatility since they can reproduce several biological reactions according to the substrates and the environmental conditions. In this context, gold-based nanozymes are a representative example of multifunctional structures that can perform a great number of enzyme-like activities. In addition, the combination of gold-based materials with structures of organic and inorganic chemical nature yields even more powerful hybrid nanozymes, which enhance their activity by providing improved features. This review will carry out a deep insight into gold-based nanozymes, revisiting not only the different type of biological enzymatic reactions that can be achieved with these kinds of systems, but also structural features of some of the most relevant hybrid gold-based nanozymes described in the literature. This literature review will also provide a representative picture of the potential of these structures to solve future technological challenges.

Inspired by biological systems, the development of artificial nanoscale materials that communicate over a short distance is still at its early stages. This work shows a new example of a cooperating system with intercommunicated devices at the nanoscale. The system is based on the new sucrose-responsive Janus gold-mesoporous silica (Janus Au-MS) nanoparticles network with two enzyme-powered nanodevices. These nanodevices involve two enzymatic processes based on invertase and glucose oxidase, which are anchored on the Au surfaces of different Janus Au-MS nanoparticles, and N-acetyl-L-cysteine and [Ru(bpy)₃]²⁺ loaded as chemical messengers, respectively. Sucrose acts as the INPUT, triggering the sequential delivery of two different cargoes through the enzymatic control. Nanoscale communication using abiotic nanodevices is a developing potential research field and may prompt several applications in different disciplines, such as nanomedicine.