scholarly journals Droplet Microfluidics-Enabled High-Throughput Screening for Protein Engineering

Micromachines ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 734 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindong Weng ◽  
James E. Spoonamore
Keyword(s):  
Protein Engineering ◽  
Directed Evolution ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
Protein Design ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Fluid Phase ◽  
Droplet Microfluidics ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities

Protein engineering—the process of developing useful or valuable proteins—has successfully created a wide range of proteins tailored to specific agricultural, industrial, and biomedical applications. Protein engineering may rely on rational techniques informed by structural models, phylogenic information, or computational methods or it may rely upon random techniques such as chemical mutation, DNA shuffling, error prone polymerase chain reaction (PCR), etc. The increasing capabilities of rational protein design coupled to the rapid production of large variant libraries have seriously challenged the capacity of traditional screening and selection techniques. Similarly, random approaches based on directed evolution, which relies on the Darwinian principles of mutation and selection to steer proteins toward desired traits, also requires the screening of very large libraries of mutants to be truly effective. For either rational or random approaches, the highest possible screening throughput facilitates efficient protein engineering strategies. In the last decade, high-throughput screening (HTS) for protein engineering has been leveraging the emerging technologies of droplet microfluidics. Droplet microfluidics, featuring controlled formation and manipulation of nano- to femtoliter droplets of one fluid phase in another, has presented a new paradigm for screening, providing increased throughput, reduced reagent volume, and scalability. We review here the recent droplet microfluidics-based HTS systems developed for protein engineering, particularly directed evolution. The current review can also serve as a tutorial guide for protein engineers and molecular biologists who need a droplet microfluidics-based HTS system for their specific applications but may not have prior knowledge about microfluidics. In the end, several challenges and opportunities are identified to motivate the continued innovation of microfluidics with implications for protein engineering.

scholarly journals Toward machine-guided design of proteins

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Surojit Biswas ◽  
Gleb Kuznetsov ◽  
Pierce J. Ogden ◽  
Nicholas J. Conway ◽  
Ryan P. Adams ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Directed Evolution ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
Protein Design ◽  
Protein Function ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Fluorescent Protein ◽  
Fitness Landscape ◽  
Optimization Strategy ◽  
Local Maxima ◽  
Green Fluorescent

AbstractProteins—molecular machines that underpin all biological life—are of significant therapeutic and industrial value. Directed evolution is a high-throughput experimental approach for improving protein function, but has difficulty escaping local maxima in the fitness landscape. Here, we investigate how supervised learning in a closed loop with DNA synthesis and high-throughput screening can be used to improve protein design. Using the green fluorescent protein (GFP) as an illustrative example, we demonstrate the opportunities and challenges of generating training datasets conducive to selecting strongly generalizing models. With prospectively designed wet lab experiments, we then validate that these models can generalize to unseen regions of the fitness landscape, even when constrained to explore combinations of non-trivial mutations. Taken together, this suggests a hybrid optimization strategy for protein design in which a predictive model is used to explore difficult-to-access but promising regions of the fitness landscape that directed evolution can then exploit at scale.

Directed Evolution of P450 Fatty Acid Decarboxylases via High-Throughput Screening Towards Improved Catalytic Activity

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huifang Xu ◽  
Weinan Liang ◽  
Linlin Ning ◽  
Yuanyuan Jiang ◽  
Wenxia Yang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Catalytic Activity ◽  
Fatty Acid ◽  
Directed Evolution ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Colorimetric Detection ◽  
Screening Method ◽  
Random Mutagenesis ◽  
Direct Production ◽  
Consumption Activity

P450 fatty acid decarboxylases (FADCs) have recently been attracting considerable attention owing to their one-step direct production of industrially important 1-alkenes from biologically abundant feedstock free fatty acids under mild conditions. However, attempts to improve the catalytic activity of FADCs have met with little success. Protein engineering has been limited to selected residues and small mutant libraries due to lack of an effective high-throughput screening (HTS) method. Here, we devise a catalase-deficient <i>Escherichia coli</i> host strain and report an HTS approach based on colorimetric detection of H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub>-consumption activity of FADCs. Directed evolution enabled by this method has led to effective identification for the first time of improved FADC variants for medium-chain 1-alkene production from both DNA shuffling and random mutagenesis libraries. Advantageously, this screening method can be extended to other enzymes that stoichiometrically utilize H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> as co-substrate.

scholarly journals Protein Engineering Approaches to Enhance Fungal Laccase Production in S. cerevisiae

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 1157
Author(s):  
Pablo Aza ◽  
Felipe de Salas ◽  
Gonzalo Molpeceres ◽  
David Rodríguez-Escribano ◽  
Iñigo de la Fuente ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Protein Engineering ◽  
Directed Evolution ◽  
Signal Peptide ◽  
Laccase Activity ◽  
Laccase Production ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Mating Factor ◽  
Conserved Amino Acids ◽  
Basidiomycete Fungi

Laccases secreted by saprotrophic basidiomycete fungi are versatile biocatalysts able to oxidize a wide range of aromatic compounds using oxygen as the sole requirement. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a preferred host for engineering fungal laccases. To assist the difficult secretion of active enzymes by yeast, the native signal peptide is usually replaced by the preproleader of S. cerevisiae alfa mating factor (MFα1). However, in most cases, only basal enzyme levels are obtained. During directed evolution in S. cerevisiae of laccases fused to the α-factor preproleader, we demonstrated that mutations accumulated in the signal peptide notably raised enzyme secretion. Here we describe different protein engineering approaches carried out to enhance the laccase activity detected in the liquid extracts of S. cerevisiae cultures. We demonstrate the improved secretion of native and engineered laccases by using the fittest mutated α-factor preproleader obtained through successive laccase evolution campaigns in our lab. Special attention is also paid to the role of protein N-glycosylation in laccase production and properties, and to the introduction of conserved amino acids through consensus design enabling the expression of certain laccases otherwise not produced by the yeast. Finally, we revise the contribution of mutations accumulated in laccase coding sequence (CDS) during previous directed evolution campaigns that facilitate enzyme production.

scholarly journals A Photoclick‐Based High‐Throughput Screening for the Directed Evolution of Decarboxylase OleT

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Markel ◽  
Pia Lanvers ◽  
Daniel F. Sauer ◽  
Malte Wittwer ◽  
Gaurao V. Dhoke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Directed Evolution ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
High Throughput Screening

scholarly journals Making Sense of “Nonsense” and More: Challenges and Opportunities in the Genetic Code Expansion, in the World of tRNA Modifications

2022 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 938
Author(s):  
Olubodun Michael Lateef ◽  
Michael Olawale Akintubosun ◽  
Olamide Tosin Olaoba ◽  
Sunday Ocholi Samson ◽  
Malgorzata Adamczyk
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acids ◽  
Genetic Code ◽  
Protein Design ◽  
Side Chains ◽  
Vast Number ◽  
Trna Modifications ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Code Extension ◽  
Genetic Code Expansion

The evolutional development of the RNA translation process that leads to protein synthesis based on naturally occurring amino acids has its continuation via synthetic biology, the so-called rational bioengineering. Genetic code expansion (GCE) explores beyond the natural translational processes to further enhance the structural properties and augment the functionality of a wide range of proteins. Prokaryotic and eukaryotic ribosomal machinery have been proven to accept engineered tRNAs from orthogonal organisms to efficiently incorporate noncanonical amino acids (ncAAs) with rationally designed side chains. These side chains can be reactive or functional groups, which can be extensively utilized in biochemical, biophysical, and cellular studies. Genetic code extension offers the contingency of introducing more than one ncAA into protein through frameshift suppression, multi-site-specific incorporation of ncAAs, thereby increasing the vast number of possible applications. However, different mediating factors reduce the yield and efficiency of ncAA incorporation into synthetic proteins. In this review, we comment on the recent advancements in genetic code expansion to signify the relevance of systems biology in improving ncAA incorporation efficiency. We discuss the emerging impact of tRNA modifications and metabolism in protein design. We also provide examples of the latest successful accomplishments in synthetic protein therapeutics and show how codon expansion has been employed in various scientific and biotechnological applications.

scholarly journals Directed Evolution of Aptamer Discovery Technologies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Wu ◽  
Chelsea Gordon ◽  
John Shin ◽  
Michael Eisenstein ◽  
Hyongsok Tom Soh
Keyword(s):  
High Throughput ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Click Reaction ◽  
Clinical Diagnostics ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Affinity Reagents ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Target Binding ◽  
Modified Nucleobases ◽  
Parallel Fashion

Although antibodies are a powerful tool for molecular biology and clinical diagnostics, there are many emerging applications for which nucleic acid-based aptamers can be advantageous. However, generating high-quality aptamers with sufficient affinity and specificity for biomedical applications is a challenging feat for most research laboratories. In this Account, we describe four techniques developed in our lab to accelerate the discovery of high quality aptamer reagents that can achieve robust binding even for challenging molecular targets. The first method is particle display, in which we convert solution-phase aptamers into aptamer particles that can be screened via fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) to quantitatively isolate individual aptamer particles based on their affinity. This enables the efficient isolation of high-affinity aptamers in fewer selection rounds than conventional methods, thereby minimizing selection biases and reducing the emergence of artifacts in the final aptamer pool. We subsequently developed the multi-parametric particle display (MPPD) method, which employs two-color FACS to isolate aptamer particles based on both affinity and specificity, yielding aptamers that exhibit excellent target binding even in complex matrices like serum. The third method is a click chemistry-based particle display (click-PD) that enables the generation and high-throughput screening of non-nattural aptamers with a wide range of base modifications. We have shown that these base-modified aptamers can achieve robust affinity and specificity for targets that have proven challenging or inaccessible with natural nucleotide-based aptamer libraries. Lastly, we describe the non-natural aptamer array (N2A2) platform, in which a modified benchtop sequencing instrument is used to characterize base-modified aptamers in a massively parallel fashion, enabling the efficient identification of molecules with excellent affinity and specificity for their targets. This system first generates aptamer clusters on the flow-cell surface that incorporate alkyne-modified nucleobases, and then performs a click reaction to couple those nucleobases to an azide-modified chemical moiety. This yields a sequence-defined array of tens of millions of base-modified sequences, which can then be characterized in a high-throughput fashion. Collectively, we believe that these advancements are helping to make aptamer technology more accessible, efficient, and robust, thereby enabling the use of these affinity reagents for a wider range of molecular recognition and detection-based applications.

scholarly journals High-Throughput Screening for Terpene-Synthase-Cyclization Activity and Directed Evolution of a Terpene Synthase

2013 ◽  
Vol 52 (21) ◽  
pp. 5571-5574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Lauchli ◽  
Kersten S. Rabe ◽  
Karolina Z. Kalbarczyk ◽  
Amulya Tata ◽  
Thomas Heel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Directed Evolution ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Terpene Synthase

Rapid generation of Hybrid Biochemical/Mechanical Cues in Heterogeneous Droplets for High-Throughput Screening of Cellular Response

Lab on a Chip ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xing Zhao ◽  
Gaozhi Ou ◽  
Mengcheng Lei ◽  
Yang Zhang ◽  
Lina Li ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Signaling Pathways ◽  
High Throughput ◽  
High Throughput Screening ◽  
Cellular Response ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Rapid Generation ◽  
P Cells

Cells in native microenvironment are subjected to varying combinations of biochemical cues and mechanical cues in a wide range. Despite many signaling pathways have been found to be responsive for...

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