The aldehyde dehydrogenase from Thermoplasma acidophilum, which was previously implemented as a key enzyme in a synthetic cell-free reaction cascade for the production of alcohols, was optimized by directed evolution. Improvements have been made to enhance reaction velocity and solubility. Using a random approach followed by site-directed and saturation mutagenesis, three beneficial amino acid mutations were found after screening of ca. 20,000 variants. Mutation Y399C enhanced the protein solubility after recombinant expression in Escherichia coil 6-fold. Two further mutations, F34M and S405N, enhanced enzyme activity with the cofactor NAJD(+) by a factor of eight. Impacts on enzyme stability and substrate specificity were negligible. Modeling of the enzyme structure did not reveal any direct interactions between the amino acid substitutions and residues of the active site or the enzyme's substrates. Thus, a directed evolution approach allowed for the generation of improved enzyme variants which were unlikely to be found by rational or semi-rational strategies. (c) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.