Presidential Young Investigator Award: Construction and Characterization of Fusion Proteins

该奖项支持一名总统青年研究员（PYI）研究各种生化工程问题。一个主要的推动力将是开发具有改进的物理和催化特性的基因工程蛋白质。增强工业上重要的酶的热稳定性将通过体外技术产生，如位点特异性诱变和化学诱变，然后克隆到嗜热细菌和选择突变体，合成原蛋白的耐温衍生物。此外，将寻求经济的蛋白质回收方案，通过构建目标基因的基因融合来合成编码序列的寡核苷酸，这些序列赋予可以用于有效回收生物制品的特性。还将进行优化重组蛋白生产的研究。这一努力将导致重组DNA在化学加工中的新应用和更大的影响。

Narrative: This award supports a Presidential Young Investigator (PYI) to study a variety of Biochemical Engineering problems. A major thrust will be made to develop genetically engineered proteins with improved physical and catalytic characteristics. Enhanced thermostability of industrially important enzymes will be generated using in vitro techniques, such as site specific mutagenesis and by chemical mutagenesis followed by cloning into thermophilic bacterium and selection of mutants that synthesize temperature tolerant derivatives of the original protein. Also, economical protein recovery schemes will be sought through the construction of gene fusions of the target gene to synthetic oligonucleotides coding for sequences that confer properties which can be exploited for efficient recovery of bioproducts. Studies will also be performed in optimizing the production of recombinant proteins. This effort should result in new applications and greater impact of recombinant DNA in chemical processing.