Pharmaceutical Biotechnology Research

DNA/protein engineering and processing

Protein engineering is the process by which a researcher modifies a protein sequence through substitution, insertion, or deletion of nucleotides in the encoding gene, with the goal of obtaining a modified protein that is more suitable for a particular application or purpose than the unmodified protein. There are three major approaches of protein engineering research, namely, directed evolution, rational design, and denovo design. Rational design is an effective method of protein engineering when the three-dimensional structure and mechanism of the protein is well known. Protein engineering and directed evolution are powerful technologies for probing protein sequence-function relationships. These methods have been used to engineer both plant-derived proteins and exogenous proteins heterologous expressed in plants.