LAUSR

Enzymes have many modern industrial applications, from biomass decomposition in the production of biofuels to highlystereospecificbiotransformations inpharmaceutical manufacture. The capacity to find or engineer enzymes with activities pertinent to specific applications has been essential for the growth of a multibillion dollar enzyme industry. Over the course of the past 50–60 years our capacity to address this issue has become increasingly sophisticated, supported by innumerable advances, from earlydiscoveries suchas theco-linearityofDNAandprotein sequence to modern computational technologies for enzymedesign.Thedesignofenzymefunction isanexciting nexus of fundamental biochemical understanding and applied engineering. Herein, we will cover some of the methodsusedindiscoveryanddesign, includingsome ‘next generation’ tools.