Selection and screening strategies in directed evolution to improve protein stability

Abstract

Protein stability is not only fundamental for experimental, industrial, and therapeutic applications, but is also the baseline for evolving novel protein functions. For decades, stability engineering armed with directed evolution has continued its rapid development and inevitably poses challenges. Generally, in directed evolution, establishing a reliable link between a genotype and any interpretable phenotype is more challenging than diversifying genetic libraries. Consequently, we set forth in a small picture to emphasize the screening or selection techniques in protein stability-directed evolution to secure the link. For a more systematic review, two main branches of these techniques, namely cellular or cell-free display and stability biosensors, are expounded with informative examples.

Keywords

Directed evolution / Protein folding / Protein stability / Cell surface display / Cell-free display / Reporter protein / Stability biosensor

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Funding

National Natural Science Foundation of China(31661143021)

Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(22221818014)

State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering