An EconoTimes perspective

Thomas Shafee

Research Fellow in Biochemistry and Evolution, La Trobe University I am a biochemist and bioinformatician focusing on how evolutionary insights can inform protein engineering. This is either by directly evolving enzymes in the lab (directed evolution) or designing proteins based on analysis of existing sequence diversity. My PhD was in the use of directed evolution to quantify evolvability and to study ancient evolutionary events in a laboratory setting. Subsequently, I have become involved in the analysis and engineering of cysteine-rich proteins, addressing the unique challenges that these proteins pose to sequence and structural analysis.