报告题目：Ancestral enzymes as a starting point for laboratory evolution of enzymes for biocatalysis
报告时间：2015年1月16日10:00
报告地点：中山大学生物楼东梯205会议室
报告人：Romas Kazlauskas教授
主持人：Antony M. Dean教授
报告人简介：
Romas Kazlauskas教授于麻省理工学院获得化学专业的博士学位，继而在哈佛大学和通用电气公司完成了博士后研究。他曾在加拿大的麦吉尔大学教授化学课程，目前在美国的明尼苏达大学教授生物化学课程。Romas教授曾在德国、瑞典和韩国做过访问学者。他最擅长的课程是《蛋白质工程》，目前也正在为此编写教科书。
报告摘要：
Both natural and laboratory evolution rely on stepwise improvements. Cooperative behavior like a catalytic mechanism is difficult to discover because they cannot be constructed stepwise; all mechanistic steps must work together. To discover new catalytic mechanisms, we are studying ancestral enzymes. Evolutionary biologists hypothesize that ancestral enzymes were generalists; that is, that they catalyzed several different reactions.
Starting from modern esterases and hydroxynitrile lyases, we created several ancestral enzymes and show that they are more catalytically promiscuous than modern enzymes. This catalytic promiscuity can now be improved stepwise to create new enzymes for applications in biocatalysis.
