The review by Christianson, published in 2017 on the twentieth anniversary of the
emergence of the field, summarizes the foundational discoveries and key advances in …

Natural proteins are often only slightly more stable in the native state than the denatured
state, and an increase in environmental temperature can easily shift the balance toward …

Ancestral sequence reconstruction (ASR) has been used to produce enzymes that exhibit
enhanced stability, activity, and promiscuity compared to wild-type (WT) enzymes. In this …

The widely used coelenterazine-powered Renilla luciferase was discovered over 40 years
ago, but the oxidative mechanism by which it generates blue photons remains unclear. Here …

Terpene synthases (TS) catalyze complex reactions to produce a diverse array of terpene
skeletons from linear isoprenyl diphosphates. Patchoulol synthase (PTS) from Pogostemon …

The sesquiterpene synthase 7-epi-α-eudesmol synthase is widespread in streptomycetes.
Several active site residues that were identified by an alignment of their amino acid …

The diterpene synthase AfAS was identified from Aspergillus fumigatiaffinis. Its amino acid
sequence and—according to a structural model—active site architecture are highly similar to …

Controlling the selectivity of a reaction is critical for target-oriented synthesis. Accessing
complementary selectivity profiles enables divergent synthetic strategies, but is challenging …

The crystal structures of cattleyene synthase (apo‐CyS), and CyS complexed with
geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate (GGPP) were solved. The CySC59A variant exhibited an …

Selective, one‐step C− H activation of fatty acids from biomass is an attractive concept in
sustainable chemistry. Biocatalysis has shown promise for generating high‐value hydroxy …