Expanding the Repertoire of Photoswitchable Unnatural Amino Acids for Enzyme Engineering.

ABSTRACT: Photoswitchable unnatural amino acids (psUAAs) play a crucial role in the engineering of light-sensitivity in enzymes, which holds significant promise for diverse applications such as biotherapy and biocatalysis. Besides near-quantitative photoconversion, the success and expediency of a psUAA for a certain application is defined by its interaction potential with the enzyme, its thermal stability and its effective wavelength of irradiation. To establish high versatility in the current repertoire, we have designed and synthesized six psUAAs based on azobenzene, arylazopyrazole, arylazothiazole, hemithioindigo and spiropyran photoswitches. The resulting psUAAs exhibit an enhanced interaction potential within an enzyme owing to their capacity for hydrogen bonding, ionic interactions and metal

SUBMITTER: Hiefinger C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12435433 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature