Speaker
Erika DeBenedictis
Description
Directed evolution provides a platform to study evolution in the
laboratory. Previously, Phage Assisted Continuous Evolution (PACE) has
been used to measure the stochasticity of evolution results and
interrogate the impact of evolutionary parameters such as mutation
rate and selection stringency. Although this technique allows for many
generations to be observed in laboratory timescales (1 generation per
20 minutes), the experiments difficult to multiplex. To address this
issue, we have implemented a robotic platform that enables massively
multiplexed continuous directed evolution. Currently, our platform can
implement 96 parallel evolution experiments, monitor a luminescence
or fluorescence readout of fitness in real time, and vary the
evolutionary conditions (such as mutation rate) amongst these
experiments. We plan to use this platform to investigate the impact of
cycling between different evolutionary conditions on the outcomes of
directed evolution experiments.
Primary author
Erika DeBenedictis
