A designer natural deep eutectic solvent to recycle the cofactor in alcohol dehydrogenase-catalysed processes.

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) nowadays represent a sustainable alternative to traditional organic solvents in (bio)transformations. Herein, the use of a solvent composed of an aqueous buffer and choline chloride : glucose (1.5 : 1 mol/mol) is proposed, a natural DES (NADES) serving as both a cosolvent and efficient system to recycle the nicotinamide cofactor. Thus, glucose from the NADES served as a co-substrate required for several alcohol dehydrogenases to reduce different prochiral ketones, and also helped to solubilise the organic compounds to develop effective biotransformations at higher substrate concentrations.