In August, Isomerase, a synthetic biology company who use microbes to make a range of products from therapeutics to enzymes, announced the launch of a powerful new tool designed to enhance the directed evolution of enzymes.

EvoSelect® models protein sequences using the Potts model and leveraging data from public and proprietary genome sequences. It predicts evolutionary fitness and iteratively mutates sequences to achieve desired properties. This results in a library of protein variants with improved functionality compared to traditional random mutagenesis strategies.

A key feature is its ability to incorporate pairwise dependencies across protein sequences, capturing epistatic effects that influence protein stability, function, and structure. This allows for the design of variants with significant sequence divergence from the original protein while retaining critical functionality.

The tool has practical applications in generating enzymes with improved activity and thermostability, significantly reducing the experimental burden in directed evolution pipelines. By restricting the sequence space using evolutionary information, it reduces the number of variants to screen, making the process more cost-effective and practical for a wide range of projects.

EvoSelect® supports industries like pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and biotechnology, providing a powerful solution for optimizing enzyme performance for diverse applications.

Read about the EvoSelect, visit Isomerase’s official page, or email bd@isomerase.com to find out more.