Current Trends in Protein Engineering: Updates and Progress

Abstract

Proteins are one of the most important and resourceful biomolecules that find applications in health, industry, medicine, research, and biotechnology. Given its tremendous relevance, protein engineering has emerged as significant biotechnological intervention in this area. Strategic utilization of protein engineering methods and approaches has enabled better enzymatic properties, better stability, increased catalytic activity and most importantly, interesting and wide range applicability of proteins. In fact, the commercialization of engineered proteins have manifested in economically beneficial and viable solutions for industry and healthcare sector. Protein engineering has also evolved to become a powerful tool contributing significantly to the developments in both synthetic biology and metabolic engineering. The present review revisits the current trends in protein engineering approaches such as rational design, directed evolution, de novo design, computational approaches etc. and encompasses the recent progresses made in this field over the last few years. The review also throws light on advanced or futuristic protein engineering aspects, which are being explored for design and development of novel proteins with improved properties or advanced applications.

Keywords: Protein engineering; computational methods; de novo design; directed evolution; rational design; semi-rational approach..