| A primary goal of protein engineering is to alter the physico-chemical and functional properties of proteins by modification of their structures. Protein structures can be engineered either by directed evolutionary approaches, which do not require any a priori knowledge of protein-function relationships, or by rational design which is based on the knowledge of these relationships. Point mutants and hybrid haloalkane dehalogenases will be constructed based on the vast amount of information and material obtained from screening projects. Construction and characterisation of mutants will serve for the validation of computational techniques and for confirmation of the conclusions made about the sequence-structure and structure-function relationships. Growing knowledge about these relationships should eventually lead to the construction of biocatalysts with the properties required for the biotechnological applications. |
