Protein Engineering

Protein engineering is an enabling tool in many areas of biotechnology and biosciences providing a range of protein functions useful for modern society including highly efficient specialized enzymes, specific and effective biological therapies, advanced molecular imaging and even new materials. Uniting all these technologies are a set of common methods for producing, mutating, selecting and screening protein variants. During the lectures, the course will cover:

(1) Basics of establishing a protein engineering experiment - recombinant protein production and mutagenesis techniques

(2) Low-throughput chromatographic/spectrophotometric and ultra-high-throughput screening and selection approaches

(3) Introduction to machine learning and atomistic computational modelling to accelerate protein engineering

In small groups, you will conduct literature research on a specific application or example of protein engineering, presenting their findings to the rest of the class during a short presentation and in a short encyclopedia style article. The topic will be selected from a list of topics, with suggested literature, or chosen by you yourselves, and specific guidance and advice on the project will be provided during the seminars.

(1) Written exam, 75% of the overall grade

(2) Group assignment (3-4 students describing a topic of protein engineering), 25% of the overall grade