News and Views

Nature Chemical Biology 2, 179 - 180 (2006)
doi:10.1038/nchembio0406-179

How to evolve a silk purse from a sow's ear

David E Cane1

  1. David E. Cane is in the Department of Chemistry, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 02912-9108, USA. e-mail: david_cane@brown.edu

The enzyme gamma-humulene synthase normally generates a mixture of more than 50 sesquiterpene products from a single substrate. Targeted evolution allowed the design of new mutants with greatly enhanced product specificity. The results provide a model for the divergent evolution of enzyme specificity from ancestral proteins of promiscuous function.

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