Linker Engineering in the Context of Synthetic Protein Switches and Sensors

2021/06/14

A growing number of applications in biotechnology and synthetic biology rely on artificially engineered protein switches and sensors. Here, peptide linkers constitute critical elements that mediate conformational transitions and switching. In a recent review featured as a cover story in Trends in Biotechnology, Alexander Gräwe and Viktor Stein, head of the Protein Engineering group at the Centre for Synthetic Biology at the TU Darmstadt, survey the state-of-the-art in linker engineering and perform an in-depth analysis of the toolboxes, molecular model and screening strategies that are available for linker engineering. The review is anticipated to provide a powerful resource for the development of novel protein switches and complex fusion proteins.