The present invention discloses a simple molecular approach for generating a multitude of structurally diverse yet functionally similar proteins that have all "evolved" from the parent enzyme, in this case a ß-lactamase. By randomly combining a set of fourteen DNA-hexamer duplexes, each corresponding to judiciously chosen amino acid pairs, we were able to generate functional proteins that contained large regions of previously unknown sequences. Some of the generated proteins were not only more active than the parent; they were also significantly smaller in size. The present invention could therefore be effectively used in searching for novel structural as well as functional proteins.
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