Abstract
AS FRANCES H. ARNOLD REcently mused out loud to a gathering of chemical engineers, just 10 years ago directed evolution was considered to be on the lunatic fringe. The idea that enzymes, which had evolved precise functions over millions of years, could be made to do unnatural things, such as work in organic solvents, was heretical. That notion fell by the wayside quickly, she said. But then critics came up with more complaints, charging that the combinatorial approach of screening thousands of randomly mutated enzymes for improved traits wasn't real science. But that didn't dissuade Arnold, a cheinical engineering professor at California Institute of Technology, from putting her research muscle behind it. But she and her peers are having the last laugh. Directed evolution is now flourishing worldwide in both academia and industry, noted Huimin Zhao, chemical engineering professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. A proliferation of biotech companies working with directed evolution, includin...
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