Laccase behavior in the microenvironment of water core within a biosurfactant-based reversed micelles system rhamnolipid/n-hexanol/isooctane/water

Compared with synthetic surfactants (cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide, sodium bis(2‐ethylhexyl) sulfosuccinate and Tween‐80), the properties of the aqueous core as well as the microenvironment behavior were investigated in water‐in‐oil microemulsions, which are formed by water and biosurfactant rhamnolipid (RL) in the solvent of isooctane/n‐hexanol (1:1, v/v). Besides, as a typical substrate of lignocellulose, guaiacol was used to detect the laccase activity in reversed micelles (RMs). The results were eventually confirmed that RL‐based RM system has higher solubilization ability, more friendly environmental compatibility and milder reaction microenvironment than the others. In this study, triangle phase diagram of surfactant/n‐hexanol/isooctane/water was constructed to analyze the variation of phase behavior between each RM system. For the RL‐based RM system, the effect of the molar ratio of water to surfactant (ω0) on enzyme hydrolytic activity was also determined to be shown as a bell‐shaped curve and presented a maximum at ω0 = 19; the O―H stretching vibrations of water in aqueous core was also studied by analyzing the IR spectrum over the region of 3050–3750 cm−1. Moreover, kinetic studies showed that the catalytic efficiency of the laccase in RL‐based RM system was lower than in aqueous solution. Nevertheless, the RM system obtained the highest hydrolysis rate at RL concentration of 1.0CMC, which is 0.055 mM. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.