Enzyme Discovery and Selection

Abstract

Enzymes have the ability of catalyzing reactions. Each organism has evolved its very own version of an enzyme. Having to select an enzyme sequence for a target reaction is not always straightforward. In some cases, we may have hundreds of variants coming from different organisms to choose from and with little information about the best choice. In other cases, no known enzyme sequence catalyzing the desired reaction would be known. In this chapter, you will learn some basic techniques based on homology modeling both of the sequence and the chemical reaction allowing to guide us when selecting enzyme sequence candidates. Based on such approaches, at the end of this chapter we will discuss how to expand natural capabilities of enzymes through promiscuity.