Topic
Construction and screening of large variant libraries to discover improved enzymes, here applied to the plastic-degrading enzyme PETase.
A single azatryptophan, which differs from tryptophan by one nitrogen, raised PET breakdown in an already heavily engineered hydrolase while thermal stability held. The team also built a minutes-long activity assay.
Reality
Researchers in Denmark and Portugal engineered a bacterial enzyme that attacks commercial polyurethane foam with no pre-treatment and at mild temperature and pressure. The rate they measured sets the distance to a plant.
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Researchers report FenixS, a 17-kDa monomeric biliverdin-binding photoreceptor, and Ash1, a 6-kDa binder whose affinity for it rises more than 1,200-fold under 700-nm light in mammalian cells with no added cofactor.
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Harvard's Church lab reports AGENTEX in Nature: engineered tRNAs and ribosomes in a cell-free mix. Nobody has to recode an organism to prototype a genetic code any more.
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A Nature Biotechnology paper reports a hybridization-driven synthesis method that builds over 1,000 distinct gene fragments in a single reaction, then uses it to find PETase variants beating the standard enzyme.
Reality