Reconstructing proteins to explain and engineer biological diversity (2016-2019)
Abstract
The aim of this project is to develop computational methods to construct entirely new proteins that operate in combinations Nature never tried. Computational reconstruction of enzymes that have been extinct for over 400 million years has revealed remarkable opportunities for biotechnological innovation. The intended outcomes are to develop bioinformatics methods to broaden the scope of ancestral protein reconstruction to include protein super-families, to establish what specific changes led to the evolutionary success of a protein, and to re-run evolution to generate proteins that perform in conditions suitable for industrial and agricultural applications, in particular the production of hydroxylated fatty acids for bioplastics.
