Enzyme design and engineering strategies rely almost exclusively on nature's alphabet of twenty canonical amino acids. Recent years have seen the emergence of powerful genetic code expansion methods that allow hundreds of structurally diverse amino acids to be installed into proteins in a site-selective manner. Here, we will highlight how the availability of an expanded alphabet of amino acids has opened new avenues in enzyme engineering research. Genetically encoded noncanonical amino acids have provided new tools to probe complex enzyme mechanisms, improve biocatalyst activity and stability, and most ambitiously to design enzymes with new catalytic mechanisms that would be difficult to access within the constraints of the genetic code. We anticipate that the studies highlighted in this article, coupled with the continuing advancements in genetic code expansion technology, will promote the widespread use of noncanonical amino acids in biocatalysis research in the coming years.

中文翻译：

---

具有非常规氨基酸的酶。

酶设计和工程策略几乎完全依赖于自然界的 20 种典型氨基酸字母表。近年来，出现了强大的遗传密码扩展方法，该方法允许以位点选择性的方式将数百种结构不同的氨基酸安装到蛋白质中。在这里，我们将重点介绍扩展的氨基酸字母表的可用性如何为酶工程研究开辟了新途径。基因编码的非经典氨基酸为探索复杂的酶机制、提高生物催化剂的活性和稳定性提供了新的工具，并且最雄心勃勃地设计了具有新催化机制的酶，这些机制在遗传密码的限制下难以获得。我们预计本文重点介绍的研究，再加上遗传密码扩展技术的不断进步，将促进非经典氨基酸在未来几年在生物催化研究中的广泛应用。