Join the enzyme evolution revolution… today!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Enzymes are cellular machines that perform a wide variety of critical tasks for human health. What if we crank them up?
Researchers have tried a technique called ‘continuous evolution’ that uses millions of live cells, to speed up evolution. But it’s still too slow!
So Christian Diercks and team from Scripps Research turned to bacteria – nature’s fastest multipliers.
This generated more experiments in less time. They also tweaked a molecular tool to introduce more mutations, and even more opportunities for evolution. An enzyme was evolved to be five thousand times more antibiotic resistant in six days!
Now science can evolve enzymes for medicine or new functions faster than ever.
Need for speed? Achieved!
Reference: Diercks, C. S., Sondermann, P. J., Rong, C., Dik, D. A., Gillis, T. G., Ban, Y., & Schultz, P. G. (2025). An Orthogonal T7 Replisome for Continuous Hypermutation and Accelerated Evolution in E. coli. Science. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.07.25.605042