Evolution at work: turning hydrolases into phosphorylases for the cost-efficient synthesis of glycosidic bonds.

Although phosphorylases are attractive biocatalysts for glycoside synthesis, the small number of available specificities (<20) limits their general use. In this project, a mutational strategy will be developed to turn hydrolases into phosphorylases by mimicking their evolutionary pathways. In that way, it should become possible to recruit the much larger diversity of hydrolase specificities (>200) for synthetic purposes.