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Exploiting spatial dimensions to enable parallelized continuous directed evolution

ABSTRACT: Current strategies to improve the throughput of continuous directed evolution technologies often involve complex mechanical fluid-controlling system or robotic platforms, which limits their popularization and application in general laboratories. Inspired by our previous study on bacterial range expansion, in this study, we report a system termed SPACE for rapid and extensively parallelizable evolution of biomolecules by introducing spatial dimensions into the landmark phage-assisted continuous evolution system. Specifically, M13 phages and chemotactic Escherichia coli cells were closely inoculated onto a semi-solid agar. The phages came into contact with the expanding front of the bacterial range, and then co-migrated with the bacteria. This system leverages competition over space, wherein evolutionary progress is closely associated with the production of spatial patterns, allowing the emergence of improved or new protein functions. In a prototypical problem, SPACE remarkably simplifies the process and evolved the promoter recognition of T7 RNA polymerase to a library of 96 random sequences in parallel. These results establish SPACE as a simple, easy to implement, and massively parallelizable platform for continuous directed evolution in general laboratories.

SUBMITTER: Dr Ting Wei

PROVIDER: S-SCDT-10_15252-MSB_202210934 | biostudies-other |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Project description:Laboratory evolution has generated many biomolecules with desired properties, but a single round of mutation, gene expression, screening or selection, and replication typically requires days or longer with frequent human intervention. Because evolutionary success is dependent on the total number of rounds performed, a means of performing laboratory evolution continuously and rapidly could dramatically enhance its effectiveness. Although researchers have accelerated individual steps in the evolutionary cycle, the only previous example of continuous directed evolution was the landmark study of Wright and Joyce, who continuously evolved RNA ligase ribozymes with an in vitro replication cycle that unfortunately cannot be easily adapted to other biomolecules. Here we describe a system that enables the continuous directed evolution of gene-encoded molecules that can be linked to protein production in Escherichia coli. During phage-assisted continuous evolution (PACE), evolving genes are transferred from host cell to host cell through a modified bacteriophage life cycle in a manner that is dependent on the activity of interest. Dozens of rounds of evolution can occur in a single day of PACE without human intervention. Using PACE, we evolved T7 RNA polymerase (RNAP) variants that recognize a distinct promoter, initiate transcripts with ATP instead of GTP, and initiate transcripts with CTP. In one example, PACE executed 200 rounds of protein evolution over the course of 8 days. Starting from undetectable activity levels in two of these cases, enzymes with each of the three target activities emerged in less than 1 week of PACE. In all three cases, PACE-evolved polymerase activities exceeded or were comparable to that of the wild-type T7 RNAP on its wild-type promoter, representing improvements of up to several hundred-fold. By greatly accelerating laboratory evolution, PACE may provide solutions to otherwise intractable directed evolution problems and address novel questions about molecular evolution.

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Exploiting spatial dimensions to enable parallelized continuous directed evolution

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