Unnatural reaction benefits from computational tool that teaches an old enzyme new tricks

An ancient enzyme has been reconfigured to catalyse a non-natural reaction at a speed comparable to that of an average modern enzyme towards it’s natural substrate.¹ Precambrian β-lactamase, as the name suggests, catalyses β-lactam hydrolysis and can degrade β-lactam antibiotics, but thanks to a new computational tool researchers have engineered it to have high activity in an anthropogenic reaction called a Kemp eliminase. ‘This is significant both from a general design perspective, and also that this significant improvement in activity was obtained through pure computational screening, which opens significant doors to future enzyme design studies on challenging systems,’ says Lynn Kamerlin of Uppsala University in Sweden, who led the work.