Screening and directed evolution of novel biocatalysts for industrial purposes

Biodiversity screening and directed evolution are two fruitful complementary approaches for the discovery and design of novel biocatalysts. Phenomics(TM) is a functional HTS technology designed and patented by Proteus for the screening of natural biodiversity as well as biodiversity generated by combinatorial biology. Phenomics(TM) is a function to gene structure approach which provides an alternative to genomics and proteomics. To generate novel variants of natural enzymes, a new technology for directed evolution, L-Shuffling(TM), has been designed and patented by Proteus. The thousands of new recombinants generated by L-Shuffling(TM) can be further screened for their biochemical characteristics using Phenomics(TM). The whole process of novel biocatalysts discovery and optimization has been automated using commercially available high throughput robotics.