title: Protein engineering: opportunities and challenges.
abstract: The extraordinary properties of natural proteins demonstrate that life-like protein engineering is both achievable and valuable. Rapid progress and impressive results have been made towards this goal using rational design and random techniques or a combination of both. However, we still do not have a general theory on how to specify a structure that is suited to a target function nor can we specify a sequence that folds to a target structure. There is also overreliance on the Darwinian blind search to obtain practical results. In the long run, random methods cannot replace insight in constructing life-like proteins. For the near future, however, in enzyme development, we need to rely on a combination of both.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Bioprocess Engineering, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 6100, 02015 HUT, Espoo, Finland. matti.leisola@tkk.fi
authors.forename: Matti
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Leisola
authors.forename: Ossi
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Turunen
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019020:Directed Molecular Evolution; D004798:Enzymes / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D015202:Protein Engineering / Q000639:trends
chemical_list: D004798:Enzymes