Engineering thermostability: lessons from thermophilic proteins.

As several groups begin to tap the rich pickings found in the Archaea--a vast kingdom that stretches the concept of life as we know it--the structures of proteins from hyperthermophiles are being elucidated. Certain features are beginning to emerge, such as compactness and hydrophobic clustering, but the ability to engineer these features into temperature-intolerant proteins is still some way off.