Research

The Longwitz lab is currently working on two different approaches to generate new catalyst. Using the power of evolution to unlock extremely active and selective catalysts, we are working on designer enzymes. These are enzymes created from a simple protein scaffold, which itself has no inherent catalytic activity. By genetic incorporation of non-canonical amino acids via a method called stop codon suppression, we generate designer enzymes. The non-canonical amino acid is bearing a functional group which does not exist in Nature, but has certain chemical properties to activate substrates for catalysis. So far, our work has focused mostly on boron based amino acids. We want to extend this methodology to new chemistry, but also using other novel protein scaffolds to improve other properties of the catalysts. On the other hand, we also want to introduce the concept of evolvability and directed evolution to chemical catalyst by creating large libraries of different types of cyclic catalysts.