Enzymic catalysis in heterogeneous eutectic mixtures of substrates.

Enzymic catalysis in heterogeneous eutectic mixtures offers advantages over conventional reactions conducted in organic solvents. Such benefits include the avoidance of bulk solvents and the attainment of greatly improved productivities. A wide range of proteases have been shown to retain their catalytic activity in eutectic mixtures of substrates, and have been used to synthesize various model and bioactive oligopeptides. Further work is required to establish what factors affect the kinetics and productivity of biocatalysis in eutectic media, and to what extent this approach can be applied to other enzyme-catalysed reactions of interest.