New system uses the process of “directed evolution” and reduces in minutes which took thousands or millions of years.
The complex process of evolution, which usually runs over thousands or even millions of years, can now be compressed in just a few minutes, ensure some researchers.
The enormous innovation is due to the so-called directed evolutionwhich will allow us to accelerate the transformation of proteins in an unprecedented way, paving the way for further advances in medicine and biotechnology.
The method is to induce beneficial mutations and select advantageous variants, creating “hyperevolved” proteins with application potential in cancer therapies and neurodegenerative diseases.
Although the approach has been studied for years, a team from Scripps Research Institute recently developed the system T7-ORACLElast month in Science magazine, which gets Condense the equivalent of 100,000 years of evolution in just a few minutes.
According to Peter Schultz, co -author of the study quoted by, the new technique works as “A quick advance button for evolution”.
So far, directed evolution systems have required repeated rounds of genetic manipulation and time consuming tests, each to take a week or more. The T7-Oracle surrounds these limitations by resorting to a modified E. coli bacteria, equipped with an artificial DNA replication system independent of cell genome. Thus it is possible to introduce mutations into each cell division – a process that occurs on average every 20 minutes.
T7-Oracle is not the only innovative method in this area. In May, other researchers in Nature Communications the platform PROTEUScapable of promoting protein evolution in mammalian cells, further expanding the dream.
The concept of evolution directed also retreats to 2018, when Frances Arnold received the prize for his pioneering work in the area. The technique allows you to “create” biomolecules similarly to the artificial selection of plants or animals, but now on much shorter temporal scales.
Practical applications range from the development of new drugs and the understanding of antibiotic resistance to use in diagnostics and therapies that can turn off disease. Outside medicine, there are perspectives to create enzymes that degrade persistent plastics in the environment.
