There is a very practical need in biotechnology to increase the rate at which new enzymes can be discovered and known enzymes can be improved. In many cases, both 'prospecting' and directed evolution endeavors are bottlenecked by the rate at which individual clones can be screened. Enabling technology will be developed to screen up to 10(9) clones per assay, within libraries expressing enzyme variants derived either from directed evolution experiments or from biodiversity sampling. Such high throughput abilities places our screening assays on a level that is on par with selection and panning, while allowing more challenging problems such as identifying mutagenized enzymes displaying enhanced catalysis to be addressed. This technology is proposed to be of general applicability in discovering very rare activities (diversity prospecting) or in engineering enzyme variants that are many mutational steps from wild- type.
GPI hardware and software can be licensed to companies interested in discovering or improving enzymes, in-house, at their own facilities. Alternatively, KAIROS can set-up a high throughput laboratory at our site for a discovery/evolution service. A third option is to sell enzymes that we have discovered or improved in-house as molecular reagents to end-users such as process chemists.
