Fundamental understanding of enzymes

We are capitalizing on in silico computational toools in concert with experimental biotechnology to expand our fundamental understanding of biocatalysts and their reaction mechanisms.

Fundamental enzymology

Water fuels the chemistry of life

In the Syrén lab we are highly interested in the importance of water networks in enzymes. We believe that redesign and reconfiguration of these networks is a new engineering strategy with great potential to generate enzymes with modulated binding affinity and improved catalytic versatility. In particular in silico enzyme design is used in designing these modulated networks.

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Modulating enzyme activity through stabilizing the transition state with favorable water networks.

Moreover, we are interested in understanding the evolution of proteins, which can lead to an enhanced understanding of structure-function relationships and may also be a promising strategy for enzyme engineering. We use bioinformatics methods, in particular ancestral sequence reconstruction, to learn about the evolution of enzyme characteristics.

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In ancestral sequence reconstruction, sequences of putative ancestral proteins are inferred. These proteins can then be produced in bacteria and characterized in the laboratory.