Screening of Large Libraries and Directed Enzyme Evolution

Screening of Large Libraries and Directed Enzyme Evolution 

Life is sustained by a complex web of chemical reactions. Catalysts, molecules that accelerate the rate of a chemical reaction but that are unchanged by the overall reaction, are essential for life as most reactions would otherwise occur far too slowly. Indeed, it can be argued that the evolution of life is essentially the story of the evolution of catalysis. In nature, most catalysts are proteins and these catalytic proteins, or enzymes, are one of the most remarkable classes of molecules to have been generated during evolution. Enzymes catalyze an enormous range of different reactions and their performances typically far exceed those of man-made catalysts. They can accelerate reactions by anything up to 10 -fold relative to the uncatalyzed reaction, enabling reactions that would otherwise have half-lives of tens of millions of years to be performed in milliseconds. 

New Challenges for Emulsions Biosensors, Nano-reactors, and Templates 

So far the major application of IVC has been to select enzymes. Griffiths has used IVC to select DNA methyltransferases and has successfully generated variants that can efficiently modify novel DNA target sequences [38]. This study provides a rare example of a laboratory-produced enzyme with a catalytic efficiency that surpasses that of the wild-type enzyme with the principle substrate. IVC has also 

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