Led by UCLA Professor Kendall Houk and University of Washington biochemist David Baker, the scientists expect such designer enzymes to have applications for defense against biological warfare by deactivating pathogenic biological agents, as well as creating more effective medications.

"The design of new enzymes for reactions not normally catalyzed in nature is finally feasible," Houk said. "The goal of our research is to use computational methods to design the arrangement of groups inside a protein to cause any desired reaction to occur."

In a previous study appearing in the March 7 edition of the journal Science, the chemists reported another successful chemical reaction that uses designer enzymes to catalyze a retro-aldol reaction, which involves breaking a carbon-carbon bond.

The latest research, which included UCLA graduate student Jason DeChancie and former postdoctoral fellow Fernando Clemente, is detailed in the online edition of the journal Nature.