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Making Proteins with Unnatural Amino Acids: The First Engineered Aminoacyl‐tRNA Synthetase Revisited
Author(s) -
Kast Peter
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
chembiochem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.05
H-Index - 126
eISSN - 1439-7633
pISSN - 1439-4227
DOI - 10.1002/cbic.201100533
Subject(s) - aminoacyl trna synthetase , amino acid , steric effects , protein engineering , aminoacyl trna , transfer rna , chemistry , biochemistry , computational biology , enzyme , biology , stereochemistry , rna , gene
Relaxed specificity: 20 years ago, the first “rationally” reengineered phenylalanyl‐tRNA synthetase provided a gateway for the biosynthetic incorporation of unnatural amino acids into proteins. The synthetase design relied neither on structural information nor directed evolution, but rather on a simple steric model. A recently published crystal structure prompts a look back at this historic strategy for producing proteins containing non‐standard residues.