Opening Keynote: The Golden Age of Directed Evolution of Enzymes

THE GOLDEN AGE OF DIRECTED EVOLUTION OF ENZYMES.

Directed enzyme evolution is leaving a golden age. The consolidation of robust mutant library creation methods and the arise of reliable high-throughput screening assays have allowed scientists all over the world to generate synthetic proteins with functionalities that surpass by far those of natural counterparts. Importantly, he nascent association between Rosetta design and phylogenetic inference methods is assisting directed evolution enterprises. Along these lines, the use of paleoenzymology -ancestral sequence reconstruction and resurrection- aims at opening unexplored avenues for the laboratory evolution of more promiscuous and stable ancestral enzymes.
In this lecture, I will discuss all these advances in this fascinating ground of research commenting several case studies from our work on peroxygenase and laccase engineering for the pharma, chemical and environmental sectors.