Arenas Carolina Díaz, Lehman Niles
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA.
Curr Protoc Nucleic Acid Chem. 2010 Mar;Chapter 9:Unit 9.7.1-17. doi: 10.1002/0471142700.nc0907s40.
In vitro experimentation techniques were developed in response to the necessity of exploring new molecular structures and functions and to better understand evolutionary phenomena that shape organismal and molecular populations. The advancement of these techniques has allowed further exploration of more complicated evolutionary dynamics. One such technique is the continuous evolution in vitro (CE) method, to which this unit is devoted. The CE method is characterized by continuous cycles of amplification of RNA molecules that occur without much participation of the researcher. This feature allows us to evolve lineages in which the evolutionary phenomena occurring at the molecular level more closely mimic what happens in organismal populations in the present, or what may have happened in RNA populations during the RNA world stage of life.
体外实验技术的发展是为了满足探索新的分子结构和功能的需要，以及更好地理解塑造生物体和分子群体的进化现象。这些技术的进步使得人们能够进一步探索更复杂的进化动力学。连续体外进化（CE）方法就是这样一种技术，本单元将专门介绍该方法。CE方法的特点是RNA分子的扩增循环不断进行，且研究人员参与较少。这一特点使我们能够进化出一些谱系，其中在分子水平上发生的进化现象更紧密地模拟了当前生物体群体中发生的情况，或者在生命的RNA世界阶段RNA群体中可能发生的情况。
