Prof. Paola Laurino leads the Protein Engineering and Evolution Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST). Fascinated by proteins, she has spent much of her career looking at the structure, function, and evolution of enzymes, a group of proteins that facilitates vital chemical reactions for living organisms. At the end of 2021, Prof. Laurino’s group published three scientific articles on different aspects of enzyme research. In this episode of the OIST podcast, science communicator Lucy Dickie caught up with Prof. Laurino to hear about this work.