Patent ID: 6867042

Claim:
A method for modifying the solubility of a protein P, which comprises the steps of: (a) introducing mutations into a DNA fragment [P], encoding protein P, generating thereby a combinatorial library of DNA fragments encoding mutated variants proteins [X]: (b) in-frame fusing individual [X] variants with a DNA [R], encoding a reporter protein R, wherein R is a green fluorescent protein, forming thereby a set of DNA constructs containing [X-R], which encode the fusion proteins X-R; (c) expressing one or more of the DNA constructs in a host cell such that one or more fusion proteins X-R are produced; and (d) determining if the reporter protein R exhibits improved detection in an X-R when compared to the detection of R in P-R, wherein an increase in detection of R in X-R indicates that the variant protein X is more soluble than protein P.