Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schwaneberg is heading the Institute of Biotechnology at RWTH Aachen University and co-appointed at the DWI-Leibniz-Institute for Interactive Materials. Core expertise of the group is protein engineering by directed evolution and rational design. In 5 subgroups a joint research agenda is pursuit to discover fundamental protein engineering principles. Projects range from fundamental science to understand structure-function relationships over protein modeling to methods development for directed evolution and optimization of biocatalysts for sustainable production from renewable resources. In the field of P450 research more than 38 manuscripts have been published and 6 patents have been filed mainly with industrial partners (e.g. BASF, DSM, Evonik). Methodological highlights comprise random mutagenesis methods like SeSaM to improve biocatalyst properties which are rationally not understood (e.g. solvent and pH stability), and OmniChange (simultaneous site-saturation of up to 5 codons) to address “focused” properties in enzymes like activity, selectivity and substrate specificity.
“The research for this work has received funding from the European Union (EU) project ROBOX (grant agreement n° 635734) under EU’s Horizon 2020 Programme Research and Innovation actions H2020-LEIT BIO-2014-1”
