Scientists in Amsterdam have succeeded in incorporating amino acids with a secondary amine into a protein to give it an enzymatic function, reports ChemCatChem.

There are many techniques for making molecules, but one relatively ‘clean’ way is to use enzymes as catalysts for certain reactions. However, using only natural enzymes limits the range of reactions that can be carried out. Scientists have therefore been producing variants or their own versions of enzymes or proteins for years, sometimes using non-canonical amino acids (ncAAs). Alejandro Gran-Scheuch, Elisa Bonandi and Ivana Drienovská from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam combined the most popular organocatalytic functions with a non-enzymatic protein, creating artificial enzymes with secondary amines for the first time.