Targeting Posttranslational Modifications – Perspectives for Biocatalyst Engineering

Engineering posttranslational modifications is of great importance in biomedical research. Recent advances in the field of biocatalyst engineering expanded the strategy of targeting posttranslational modifications to a novel research field, i.e. rendering the particular enzyme more efficient for the desired biocatalytic conversion. Thus enzymes could be trimmed to higher fitness for technical applications e.g. by improved activity and/or prolonged life-time. Furthermore, bottlenecks during enzyme expression caused by posttranslational processing in the cell can be overcome. Focusing especially on recent approaches in our laboratory, this article presents strategies for targeted manipulations of selected posttranslational modifications.