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Site-Directed Mutagenesis (SDM)
A technique that can be used to make a protein that
differs slightly in its structure from the protein
that is normally produced (by an organism or cell). A
single mutation (in the cell's DNA) is caused by
hybridizing the region in a codon to be mutated with a
short, synthetic oligonucleotide. This causes the
codon to code for a different specific amino
acid in the protein gene product.
Site-directed mutagenesis holds the potential to enable man to create modified (engineered) proteins that have
desirable properties not currently available in the
proteins produced by existing organisms. For example, during the 1990s, Georges Fuller and Charles Gerday utilized SDM (starting with a Bacillus bacteria from Antarctica that naturally produces subtilisin) to create an enzyme (for subtilisin production) which possessed 20 times the catalytic activity of other subtilisin-production enzymes.
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