High Activity Preparations of Lipases and Proteases for Catalysis in Low Water Containing Organic Solvents and Ionic Liquids

Simple precipitation of enzymes has shown impressive catalytic efficiencies in organic solvents. In asmuch as these can be recovered after the reaction, these can be viewed as immobilized preparations just like more extensively used cross-linked enzyme aggregates (CLEAs). This chapter describes three protocols which use these enzyme precipitated and rinsed with propanol/some other appropriate organic solvent. The first two protocols show their applications in ionic liquids for a transesterification reaction and a kinetic resolution. The third protocol presumably incorporates an “imprinting” effect so that the precipitates are now able to efficiently catalyze transesterification of tributyrin with tertiary alcohols.