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Breeding a better vector

William Wells

Genome Biology 2000, 1:spotlight-20000807-01 doi:10.1186/gb-spotlight-20000807-01


The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at:


Published:7 August 2000

© 2000 BioMed Central Ltd

Research news

DNA shuffling (also called molecular breeding) generates variation by random fragmentation of a cloned gene followed by reassembly of the fragments in a self-priming polymerase reaction. The result is a recombination of overlapping fragments that have different mutations or come from different, naturally occurring homologous genes. In the August Nature Genetics Soong et al. apply this technique to a pool of six different murine leukemia virus envelope sequences to derive a new virus that can, unlike its parents, infect Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHOK1) cells (Nat. Gen. 2000, 25:436-439). Similar selections on clinically relevant cell types may yield improved vectors for gene therapy.

References

  1. Rapid evolution of a protein in vitro by DNA shuffling.

    PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text OpenURL

  2. DNA shuffling of a family of genes from diverse species accelerates directed evolution.

    PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text OpenURL

  3. [http://www.nature.com/ng/] webcite

    Nature genetics