Understanding and evolving enzyme function

由于节俭，大自然通常会重新利用（进化）用于生物合成有价值的天然产物的酶的功能，以用于新的任务。一个常见的例子涉及改变底物特异性以产生稀有化学类型的新变体。这些酶家族代表了研究蛋白质进化的有趣机会，并且它们代表了用于高价值化学品的（生物）化学合成的环境友好催化剂。该项目将研究这一过程，最终目标是生物工程酶实现新的功能，从而能够生产有价值的新的“非天然”天然产品用于医学，例如作为新的抗生素。

Being ever thrifty, Nature commonly re-purposes (evolves) the functionality of enzymes used in the biosynthesis of valuable natural products for new tasks. A common example involves altering substrate specificity to produce new variants of a rare chemical type. Such enzyme families represent an intriguing opportunity to study protein evolution, and they represent environmentally friendly catalysts for the (bio)chemical synthesis of high value chemicals. This project will investigate this process with the ultimate goal of bioengineering enzymes to carry out new functions, enabling the production of valuable new 'non-natural', natural products for use in medicine, for example as new antibiotics.