“…The term non-conventional media in biocatalysis alludes to systems that take advantage of solvents other than water, or use the addition of components to aqueous systems in order to favour particular characteristics of the biocatalyst or the reaction catalysed by it (Krieger et al, 2004). The advantages of performing enzyme catalysed biochemical reactions in organic solvents include: (i) increased solubility of non-polar substrates and products, which markedly speeds up overall reaction rates (Srisimarat & Pongsawasdi, 2008;Torres & Castro, 2004); (ii) reversal of thermodynamic equilibrium in favour of synthesis over hydrolysis, allowing reactions usually not favoured in aqueous solutions to occur (e.g., transesterification, thioesterification, aminolysis; Cruz- Guerrero, Gómez-Ruiz, Viniegra-González, Bárzana, & García Garibay, 2006;Hua et al, 2010;Srisimarat & Pongsawasdi, 2008;Torres & Castro, 2004;Yoon & Mckenzie, 2005); (iii) changes the enantioselectivity of the enzyme (Klibanov, 2001;Torres & Castro, 2004;Watanabe & Ueji, 2001). Maugard, Gaunt, Legoy, and Besson (2003) found that the use of hexanolebuffer system (70:30, v/v) as the reaction media for microwave-assisted synthesis of galactooligosaccharides (GOS) catalysed by immobilised lactase results in an increase of 217-fold in the selectivity of the reaction.…”