Understanding and evolving enzyme function

大自然一向节俭，通常会将用于有价值的天然产物生物合成的酶的功能重新用于新的任务。一个常见的例子涉及改变底物的特异性以产生一种稀有化学类型的新变体。这样的酶家族代表了研究蛋白质进化的一个有趣的机会，它们代表了高价值化学品（生物）化学合成的环境友好催化剂。该项目将研究这一过程，最终目标是使生物工程酶发挥新的功能，从而生产出有价值的新的“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.