Protein Engineering: Creating Novel Products and Processes to Solve a Variety of Complex Problems

It can take hundreds of genetic mutations to optimize an enzyme’s performance. The key is to have the right technology, software and skillset so that decisions are made quickly and effectively to ensure that only the most beneficial mutations are incorporated into the final molecule.

Optimization can be achieved with directed evolution, a powerful technology used in protein engineering that mimics the process of natural selection to guide proteins or nucleic acids toward a defined goal. This technology is increasingly being viewed as critical for any process that carries out chemical transformations. In 2018, the Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded to Frances Arnold for her work on directed evolution due to the impact it has had on a variety of fields.

Codexis has been at the forefront of this practice, developing proprietary methods and technologies to accelerate the improvement of biochemical steps for industrial, research and therapeutic applications. In this free webinar, participants will learn what directed evolution is, how it is implemented and how it can be used to enhance processes and products.

Specific topics to be discussed include:

• Identifying a starting protein for evolution
• How new protein libraries are designed and built using proprietary bioinformatics
• How thousands of proteins are expressed, rapidly and in parallel
• Advanced tools and automation for testing enzyme performance
• How data is analyzed using machine learning to correlate sequence-function relationships.
• High- vs. low-risk steps in the process
• What kind of success rate can be expected

Speaker

Oscar Alvizo, Director of Computational Biology, Codexis, Inc.

Oscar Alvizo heads the structural biology group and the CodeEvolver® software engineering team at Codexis. During his 12-year tenure at Codexis, he has been listed as an inventor in over 80 granted patents worldwide for his contributions in the field of directed evolution. He leads the R&D efforts for some of Codexis’ largest pharma partners and spearheads the transfer of the CodeEvolver® technology to licensees. Oscar was co-recipient of the Green Chemistry Challenge Award from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for his participation in the engineering of the LovD enzyme used in the manufacturing of Simvastatin. He received his PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Caltech for his work on computational protein design.

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