Protein engineering is an important method to improve (recombinant) proteins for various applications, such as biocatalysis, food processing, pulp and paper processing, bioremediation, and also as various biopharmaceuticals. While protein engineering has been a routine procedure in many laboratories in academia and in industry for many years, the methods changed significantly over the past two decades. Many more protein sequences, structures, and biochemical data are available now, and the computational power and methods for data analysis improved significantly. However, to meet specific goals, the methods have to be carefully chosen depending on the protein, available data, equipment, expertise, as well as time and costs.

This article provides an overview of laboratory and computational methods used in protein engineering and examples of their applications, focusing on enzyme engineering.