Enzyme engineering

Enzyme engineering consists in altering the enzyme’s amino-acid sequence through DNA mutations to produce molecular variants.
Directed evolution is either conducted at the level of the purified enzyme, or at the level of the whole microbe producing it.

This process can generate new biochemical pathways or enhance the catalytic activity of the enzyme, or alter its substrate specificity.

Enzyme engineering is used in many industries such as the food industry or the environmental industry, and for various applications such as :

• Producing new food ingredients
• Improving enzyme production by microorganisms (amylases, lipases, proteases…)
• Finding new enzymes for depollution processes
• Using enzymes as nanodevices in nanobiotechnologies
• Producing enzymes for industrial biotransformation.

Directed Evolution of enzymes through high-throughput screening of bacterial mutant libraries (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2018) involves long and costly screening protocols that are currently carried out on robotic platforms sorting a maximum of 10,000 bacteria per day. Smart ID probes are a game changer for producers of high-performance strains and industrial enzymes. By applying SmartID probes to cytometric analysis of mutant libraries, one can potentially sort up to 10,000,000 bacteria per day, while faithfully labeling cells exhibiting the desired mutant activity. This process is a true manifestation of the slogan: You get what you’re screening for !