Directed evolution improves a protein by generating variants and selecting those that perform a desired function. The selection conditions determine which traits are rewarded, so a constant demand for activity can favor proteins that stay active. Optovolution changes that setup by selecting for useful transitions between states as well as activity within a state.
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1:19>> So we want to make new proteins. >> Yes. >> All the time. Right. That's a lot of biomedical research going on right now is to make new enzymes, new types of proteins to do all sorts of things. And traditionally, a lot of times what we can do is use inlab evolution to make novel proteins. Now, those techniques for reasons that we're going to get into only make certain types of proteins, specifically ones that always remain on. But if we want proteins with actual more natural dynamics like proteins that turn on for certain things and off for certain things or if we want to have like mini logic gates like the the ones that we have in our computer for the and or the or or the exclusive or things
1:59like that it's been really difficult to use the traditional technique to build those types. This is taking that step forward. Okay, it's a breakthrough called optoe evolution from EPFL in Switzerland. It's a cell journal publication and the mechanism is really really cool. What it's doing is it's using continuous evolution with light to steer the evolution of dynamic proteins. Not just proteins that are going to be in one state all the time, but proteins that can transition and be in dynamic states. It couples like effectively like an oscillator, like a optical oscillator
2:39with internal cell cycle oscillators. There's like incredible like deep physics underlying this and it's it's actually really really cool. Um, and to get started, let's just go through some of the history of directed evolution. Okay, >> so evolution is really kind of an optimization, right? We all know it as nature's way of engineering biological systems. There's the idea of survival of the fittest, which is you've got some population inside of the population, inside of that DNA, there's a lot of variation when it goes from one generation to the next. So you have variations in the genetic code, which leads to variations in phenotype, which means that, you know, like I'm going to
3:21have black hair or blonde hair or whatever. And through natural selection, the organisms that function most effectively are going to reproduce more and they're going to proliferate more. And that's basically the central tenant for evolution. Now, humans have harnessed this process for a very long time to do artificial selection, artificial evolution. Early farmers influenced evolution by choosing which crops or which livestock to actually move on to the next generation. And if you look at, you know, the thousands of years of selective breeding have given us all of the crops that we know and love, but they started out not great.
Molecular BiologyProtein EngineeringSynthetic BiologyBioengineering