Understanding and evolving enzyme function

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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.