Biomolecular engineering: a new frontier in biotechnology

Abstract The advances in high throughput screening technology for discovery of target molecules and the accumulation of functional genomics and proteomics data at an ever-accelerating rate will enable us to design and discover novel biomolecules and proteins on a rational basis in diverse areas of pharmaceutical, agricultural, industrial, and environmental applications. The biomolecular engineering will no doubt become one of the most important scientific disciplines in that it will enable us to comprehensively analyze gene expression patterns in both normal and diseased cells and to discover many new biologically active molecules rationally and systematically. As an applied molecular evolution technology, DNA shuffling will play a key role in biomolecular engineering. In contrast to the point mutation techniques, DNA shuffling exchanges large functional domains of sequences to search for the best candidate molecule, thus mimicking and accelerating the process of sexual recombination in the evolution of life. The phage-display system of combinatorial peptide libraries will be extensively exploited to design and create many more novel proteins, due to the relative ease of screening and identifying desirable proteins. Its application will be extended further into the science of protein–receptor or protein–ligand interactions. The bioinformatics including EST-based or SAGE-tag-based functional genomics and proteomics will continue to advance rapidly. Its biological knowledge base will expand the scope of biomolecular engineering, and the impact of well-coordinated biomolecular engineering research will be very significant on our understanding of gene expression, upregulation and downregulation, and posttranslational protein processing in healthy and diseased cells. The bioinformatics for genome and proteome analysis will contribute substantially toward ever more accelerated advances in pharmaceutical industry. When the functional genomics database, EST and SAGE techniques, microarray technique, and proteome analysis by 2-dimensional gel electrophoresis or capillary electrophoresis are all put to good use, the biomolecular engineering research will yield new drug discoveries, improved therapies, and new or significantly improved bioprocesses. With the advances in biomolecular engineering, the rate of finding new high-value peptides or proteins including antibodies, vaccines, enzymes, and therapeutic peptides will continue to be accelerated. The targets for rational design of biomolecules will be very broad, diverse, and complex, but many application goals can be achieved through the expansion of knowledge base on biomolecules of interest and their roles and functions in cells and tissues. In the near future, more therapeutic drugs and high-value biomolecules will be designed and produced for the treatment or prevention of not-so-easily-cured diseases such as cancers, genetic diseases, age-related diseases, and other metabolic diseases. Also anticipated are many more industrial enzymes that will be engineered to confer desirable properties for the process improvement and manufacturing of many high-value biomolecular products. Many more new metabolites including novel antibiotics that are active against resistant strains will be also produced by recombinant organisms having de novo engineered biosynthetic pathway enzyme systems. The biomolecular engineering era is here and a great deal of benefits can be derived from this field of scientific research for many years to come if we are willing to put it to good use.