Targeting Single Amino Acid Changes to Develop High Performance Proteins

Verenium’s patented GSSM™ technology rapidly generates protein variants by incorporating any or all of the 20 possible amino acids at every position along a protein’s sequence. From our experience, often just a few amino acid changes can result in proteins with significantly improved characteristics. As an added benefit, GSSM™ technology does not require the knowledge of a protein's structure, reducing to a few months what used to take biochemists and molecular biologists years to accomplish.

The GSSM™ Process

1. Target Protein for Improvement
2. Change Amino Acid(s)

Verenium identifies a protein for optimization through extensive screening of Verenium’s proprietary gene libraries or, alternatively, a partner supplies a protein targeted for improvement.

Verenium utilizes GSSM™ technology to evolve the gene encoding a protein by systematically changing each amino acid in the sequence to every other possible amino acid. This is accomplished by changing the nucleotides that make up the codons of the DNA strand to every other possible codon.
3. Complete Variant Library
4. Select Variants

From these efforts, a new gene variant library is born containing genes with every single site variation in the sequence. These variants produce proteins with site specific mutations.

Through customizable high-throughput screening, Verenium identifies the variants, or up-mutants, that demonstrate improved characteristics.
5. Combine Mutations
6. Generate Optimized Protein

Verenium then tests all potential combinations of the single amino acid changes that demonstrated improved characteristics and selects the optimal combination for best performance.

Through GSSM™ technology, the new protein is now optimized for demanding commercial or pharmaceutical applications. From enzymes to antibodies, GSSM™ technology provides the evolution technology to engineer small changes that yield dramatic improvements.

© 2007 Verenium Corporation. All rights reserved.
55 Cambridge Parkway, Cambridge, MA 02142 617.674.5300
Risk Disclosure - Privacy Policy