State-of-Art in Protein Engineering

Dear Colleagues,

A Special Issue on “State-of-Art in Protein Engineering” is being prepared for the journal Biomolecules.

Protein engineering is a branch of molecular biology and biotechnology aimed at the modification of natural protein structures and functions to obtain new proteins with altered or novel structural properties and/or biological functions for better use in scientific research, medicine, agriculture and industry. Protein engineering can also create new, nonnatural proteins with predesigned structures and functions. Protein engineers use recombinant DNA technology to create genes for new proteins with desirable amino acid sequences. Many modified natural and de novo designed proteins have been engineered and investigated over the years using both rational design and directed evolution methods. Rational design is based on an understanding of molecular structure and structure–function relationships to obtain desirable new proteins. Directed evolution methods select variants with desirable properties among a great variety of randomly engineered sequences, thus mimicking natural evolution processes. Both approaches are complimentary and widely use computational methods, among them being the very promising new technique of artificial intelligence. Modern protein engineering includes the modification of protein stability, ligand-binding properties, enzyme activity and specificity; de novo design; the improvement of the therapeutic properties of medicinal proteins, etc. Original manuscripts and reviews dealing with any aspect of protein engineering are very welcome for inclusion in the Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Dmitry A. Dolgikh
Guest Editor
Dr. Lada E. Petrovskaya
Co-Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Biomolecules is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.