Our approach is unusual in that it requires neither extensive screening, nor in-depth knowledge of the target enzyme. This is possible, because the method systematically targets conserved residues, which are generally omitted in enzyme engineering approaches in order to avoid loss of activity or stability . It is a powerful approach here as it does not aim to improve a defining characteristic of an enzyme, but rather sets out to eliminate a property (i.e. the ability to perform hydrolysis). We anticipate that our method can be applied to other enzymes displaying activities or properties that must be suppressed rather than enhanced. One obvious caveat is that some key determinants of the T/H ratio might not be conserved residues and will thus be undetectable using this method. Thus, this strategy is not very likely to lead to the absolute best possible solution, but it does swiftly lead to an improvement over the WT enzyme.