Abstract: The present invention relates to variants of a cell-wall degrading enzyme having a beta-helix structure, which variant has at least one substituent in a position determined by identifying all residues potentially belonging to a stack; characterizing the stack as interior or exterior; characterizing the stack as polar, hydrophobic or aromatic/heteroaromatic based on the dominating characteristics of the parent or wild-type enzyme stack residues and/or its orientation relative to the beta-helix (interior or exterior); optimizing all stack positions of a stack either to hydrophobic aliphatic amino acids, hydrophobic aromatic or polar amino acids by allowing mutations within one or all positions to amino acids belonging to one of these groups; measuring thermostability of the variants by DSC or an application-related assay such as a Pad-Steam application test; and selecting the stabilized variants. Variant of a wild-type parent pectate lyase (EC 4.2.2.

Abstract: The present invention relates to variants of a cell-wall degrading enzyme having a beta-helix structure, which variant has at least one substituent in a position determined by identifying all residues potentially belonging to a stack; characterizing the stack as interior or exterior; characterizing the stack as polar, hydrophobic or aromatic/heteroaromatic based on the dominating characteristics of the parent or wild-type enzyme stack residues and/or its orientation relative to the beta-helix (interior or exterior); optimizing all stack positions of a stack either to hydrophobic aliphatic amino acids, hydrophobic aromatic or polar amino acids by allowing mutations within one or all positions to amino acids belonging to one of these groups; measuring thermostability of the variants by DSC or an application-related assay such as a Pad-Steam application test; and selecting the stabilized variants. Variant of a wild-type parent pectate lyase (EC 4.2.2.