Online protein engineering portal
Protein engineering has been witnessing a renaissance in recent years with the emergence of new technologies that help researchers create new proteins. These new proteins offer significant potential not only in biology research but also a variety of other fields ranging from biomedicine to energy production. The EU-funded project NEWPROT (An interactive protein engineering portal with validated software and database facilities) has built an interactive portal for protein engineering that incorporates different software products to facilitate research and development. NEWPROT has streamlined collaboration at both the human and software level and optimised their self-service portal (SSP) for protein engineering. The predictive technologies have been experimentally validated using mutation and design experiments. The portal's strength lies in exploring the effect of mutations on protein stability, selectivity and activity as well as on production level. Software and databases have been made open access to relevant key players such as protein engineers and other interested scientists and educators. The SSP is providing European software companies implicated in this ambitious initiative with an important outlet to showcase their software capabilities. The portal itself will appeal to the thousands of protein engineers across the globe, be they in industry or academia. This enables faster design of new medicines, facilitates production of biofuels and supports production of certain kinds of foods. NEWPROT has now streamlined collaboration at both the human and software level and optimised their (SSP) for in silico protein engineering. Importantly, this interactive SSP is freely available and instructions for its usage and functionality are available via several YouTube videos under the NewProt tutorials channel. The validation experiments have actually enabled the engineering of synthetically useful enzymes and some engineered biocatalysts have already been marketed by two small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). NEWPROT has therefore provided these two SMEs with highly efficient tools to ensure excellent and competitive standing in their business areas. NEWPROT research results have fostered a collaboration that is focusing on small molecule therapies that target autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. The project has played, and will continue to play, an important role in furthering sustainability and improving the standard of living globally.
Keywords
Protein engineering, in silico, NEWPROT, self-service portal, mutations
