The Bailey Lab just published their first review article “Site directed mutagenesis as a precision tool to enable synthetic biology with engineered modular polyketide synthases” in Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology.
This article is an overview on a way to target genetic changes to change as little as one amino acid to change the function of polyketide synthases.
“Polyketides have a correspondence between their sequence and the structure of the small molecules they create, which are often important pharmaceuticals,” said Assistant Professor Constance Bailey. “Finding ways to subtly alter the structure of the metabolite that forms is a way to enable the discovery of new important drugs.”
The group reviews examples of targeted point mutagenesis to one or a few residues harbored within the PKS that alter domain specificity or selectivity, affect protein stability and interdomain communication, and promote more complex catalytic reactivity.
