(149d) Going Deep with Biomolecular Engineering and Design

This talk will highlight recent advances from my lab coupling DNA deep sequencing with biomolecular engineering and design. I will begin by describing a general method for the experimental determination of the single mutation fitness landscape of complete protein sequences. I will then show how this general method can be applied to multiple fields of biotechnological import. For antibody engineering, I will show how this method can be applied to finely map non-contiguous antibody epitopes that can be used to increase antibody specificity as well as predict escape mutants. For metabolic engineering, we have applied this method to map and optimize a catabolic pathway in living organisms for expedited processing of bio-oil. For diagnostic fields, I will show how this method can illuminate and switch the specificity determinants of binding proteins to different Gram-negative microorganisms, including Yersinia pestis.  Perspective about further integrating fitness landscapes with computational design will also be discussed.