Science's new technology: One chip can detect mutations of thousands of enzymes at the same time

It often takes years to figure out how proteins or enzymes work and how genetic mutations affect these vital molecules

Now, a glass chip etched with tiny channels allows researchers to test more than 1,000 mutations at a time, reducing the time to just a few hours

In order to develop HT-MEK, bioengineer Polly Fordyce and biochemist Daniel Herschlag and their colleagues at Stanford University in California worked for six years and finally got a chip worth 10 dollars and about 7 square centimeters in size

To test this system, Fordyce and Herschlag chose a bacterial enzyme called PafA, which can change other proteins

This platform does not simply tell researchers whether the experiment is successful, but allows them to check the speed of each mutant enzyme's reaction and determine how changes in chemicals or pH affect the way the enzyme folds and functions

Because it can screen so many mutants at once, the system allows researchers to see things beyond the active site mutation

He and Fordyce said that the ability to recognize these distant mutations may allow researchers to target enzymes that are considered "unavailable" because their active sites are structurally similar to other healthy enzymes

Douglas Fowler, a protein scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, said: "This is indeed an impressive amount of work

Although the instructions for setting up the HT-MEK system have been published online, Herschlag hopes to establish a center where researchers can test the enzymes they are interested in

Single chip tests thousands of enzyme mutations at once