Accelerated protein engineering for chemical biotechnology via homologous recombination

Protein engineering has traditionally relied on random mutagenesis strategies to generate diverse libraries, which require high-throughput screening or selection methods to identify rare variants. Alternatively, approaches to semi-rational library construction can be used to minimize the screening load and enhance the efficiency by which improved mutants may be identified. Such methods are typically limited to characterization of relatively few variants due to the difficulties in generating large rational libraries. New tools from synthetic biology, namely multiplexed DNA synthesis and homologous recombination, provide a promising avenue to rapidly construct large, rational libraries. These technologies also enable incorporation of synthetically encoded features that permit efficient characterization of the fitness of each mutant. Extension of these tools to protein library design could complement rational protein design cycles in an effort to more systematically search complex fitness landscapes. The highly parallelized nature with which such libraries can be generated also has the potential to expand directed protein evolution from single protein targets to protein networks whose concerted activities are required for the biological function of interest.