Biocatalytic transamination in a monolithic flow reactor: improving enzyme grafting for enhanced performance.

Transaminases were immobilized onto macrocellular silica monoliths and used for carrying a continuous flow mode transamination reaction. Monoliths were prepared an emulsion-templated sol-gel method and functionalised by amino-moieties (3-aminopropyl-triethoxysilane, APTES) in order to covalently immobilize the enzymes, using glutaraldehyde as a cross-linking agent. In order to obtain higher performance and improved reproducibility, we investigate the key parameters of APTES functionalisation and of enzyme grafting.