To characterize the contributions of individual amino acids to the structure or function of a protein, researchers have adopted directed evolution approaches, which use iterated cycles of mutagenesis and selection or screening to search vast areas of sequence space for sets of mutations that provide insights into the protein of interest.
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Acknowledgements
We thank K. Esvelt for helpful discussions. C.M.Y. is supported by an Eli Lilly Organic Chemistry Graduate Fellowship. D.R.L. gratefully acknowledges support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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Yuen, C., Liu, D. Dissecting protein structure and function using directed evolution. Nat Methods 4, 995–997 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth1207-995
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth1207-995
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