Creating Hybrid Genes by Homologous Recombination

Abstract

Recombination of homologous genes is a powerful mechanism for generating sequence diversity, and can be applied to protein analysis and directed evolution.In vitrorecombination methods such as DNA shuffling are very flexible and can give hybrid genes with multiple crossovers; they have been used extensively to evolve proteins with improved and novel properties.In vivorecombination in bothE. coliand yeast is greatly enhanced by double-strand breaks; forE. coli, mutant strains are often necessary to obtain high efficiency. Intra- and inter-molecular recombinationIn vivohave distinct features; both give hybrids with one or two crossovers, and have been used to study structure-function relationships of many proteins. Recentlyin vivorecombination has been used to generate diversity for directed evolution, creating a large phage display antibody library. Recombination methods will become increasingly useful in light of the explosion in genomic sequence data and potential for engineered proteins.