Experimental evolution of phosphotriestrase to switch the catalytic activities

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Evolution provides the theoretical framework by which we can understand biology. Understanding evolutionary dynamics is also crucial to develop technologies and methodologies to engineer and design new enzymes in the laboratory. Insights that have come from existing sequences have substantially developed our knowledge of molecular evolution. However, this traditional analysis does not examine evolutionary intermediates. It therefore limits our ability to investigate evolutionary mechanisms in detail. Experimental evolution enables us to reconstruct evolutionary processes in a controlled laboratory setting. The evolutionary intermediates obtained in the experiments represent a molecular "fossil record", and allow us to explore the step-by-step evolution of molecular function, and to elucidate how proteins have acquired diverse functions and structures.