Directed mutagenesis as a technique to study protein function: application to β-lactamase

The function of a protein follows uniquely from its three-dimensional structure, which is unambiguously determined by the linear sequence of amino acids. Thus to undertake a systematic study of the relationship between protein structure and function, one would ideally like to be able to alter the structural gene in various ways to encode proteins with novel sequences, structures and functions. Various mutagenic strategies and methods have recently been developed that allow one to achieve these objectives.