Protein design

Protein design is the rational design of new protein molecules to design novel activity, behavior, or purpose, and to advance basic understanding of protein function.^[1] Proteins can be designed from scratch (de novo design) or by making calculated variants of a known protein structure and its sequence (termed protein redesign). Rational protein design approaches make protein-sequence predictions that will fold to specific structures. These predicted sequences can then be validated experimentally through methods such as peptide synthesis, site-directed mutagenesis, or artificial gene synthesis.

Rational protein design dates back to the mid-1970s.^[2] Recently, however, there were numerous examples of successful rational design of water-soluble and even transmembrane peptides and proteins, in part due to a better understanding of different factors contributing to protein structure stability and development of better computational methods.