A new method that successfully designs serine hydrolase enzymes capable of catalyzing ester hydrolysis with high efficiency, demonstrates a computational approach for creating de novo enzymes that catalyze complex, multistep reactions.
The research was published in a paper titled, “Computational design of serine hydrolases,” in Science. The findings provide a framework for engineering enzymes with intricate active sites, expanding the possibilities for synthetic biocatalysts.
Designing functional enzymes from scratch remains a significant challenge in protein engineering. Traditional approaches often rely on inserting active sites into existing protein scaffolds, which can limit catalytic efficiency due to structural constraints. Until recently,…