Master ChemBio&Mat | Closing Lecture: Design can pave the way to fully programmable enzyme catalysts

Abstract:

Biocatalysis is emerging as a key enabling technology for the development of a greener and more efficient chemical industry. Because natural enzymes are seldom suitable for direct use in chemical processes, however, protein engineering is typically required to optimize their properties for practical applications. For many desirable chemical transformations, natural enzymes may not even exist. Recent advances on the computational design of atomically accurate protein structures, combined with high-throughput evolutionary optimization, are providing a potential roadmap for reliably creating new-to-nature biocatalysts in response to diverse societal demands. In this lecture, the strategies, opportunities, and challenges facing this emerging field will be surveyed.

Biosketch:

Donald Hilvert has been full Professor at the Organic Chemistry Laboratory of ETH Zurich since October 1, 1997. His group is developing general strategies for the design of proteins with customized catalytic properties. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the molecular origins of the catalytic powers of natural enzymes and their selectivity. Beyond that artificial biocatalysts may be useful in research, medicine and industry.
Professor Hilvert was born in 1956 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, and obtained his B.A. from Brown University, Rhode Island, in 1978. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University, New York, in 1983, with a dissertation under the supervision of Prof. R. Breslow. Following a postdoctoral work with Prof. E.T. Kaiser at Rockefeller University, New York, he joined the Scripps Research Institute as an assistant professor in 1986, where he was named associate professor in 1989 and full professor in 1993. He came to ETH Zurich as full Professor of Organic Chemistry in 1997. He has been awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 1991-93, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award of the ACS in 1992, and the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry in 1994.

Source: https://protein.ethz.ch/the-group/group-members/hilvert-donald.html