Site-Saturation Mutagenesis

To appreciate the challenge of designing and carrying out a successful directed protein evolution experiment, it is important to underscore the powerful combinatorial features of this system. A typicalprotein is a linear chain of N amino acids (N is usually several hundred), and there are 20 possible amino acids at each position in the chain. Thus the `sequence space' of possible proteins is huge beyond the imagination (20N ). Even in 4 billion years, nature has had a chance to explore but a tiny fraction of these possibilities. A laboratory exploration of this vast space of sequences and their corresponding functions must obviously be severely limited and carefully guided [Arnold, 1998a]. Because much of sequence space will be devoid of the desired function and probably even folded proteins, it is best to direct the evolution of one (or more) existing enzymes rather than look for function in random peptide libraries. BioPioneer offers site-saturation mutagenesis service. Please inquire the price and lead time.