Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Microbial Sciences Institute, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA; email:
Annu Rev Biophys. 2021 May 6;50:323-341. doi: 10.1146/annurev-biophys-101220-072829. Epub 2021 Mar 1.
Directed evolution is a form of artificial selection that has been used for decades to find biomolecules and organisms with new or enhanced functional traits. Directed evolution can be conceptualized as a guided exploration of the genotype-phenotype map, where genetic variants with desirable phenotypes are first selected and then mutagenized to search the genotype space for an even better mutant. In recent years, the idea of applying artificial selection to microbial communities has gained momentum. In this article, we review the main limitations of artificial selection when applied to large and diverse collectives of asexually dividing microbes and discuss how the tools of directed evolution may be deployed to engineer communities from the top down. We conceptualize directed evolution of microbial communities as a guided exploration of an ecological structure-function landscape and propose practical guidelines for navigating these ecological landscapes.
定向进化是一种人工选择形式，已经使用了几十年，用于寻找具有新的或增强的功能特性的生物分子和生物体。定向进化可以被概念化为对基因型-表型图谱的有指导的探索，其中具有理想表型的遗传变异首先被选择，然后进行诱变以在基因型空间中搜索更好的突变体。近年来，将人工选择应用于微生物群落的想法得到了发展。在本文中，我们回顾了将人工选择应用于无性分裂微生物的大型和多样化群体时的主要限制，并讨论了如何部署定向进化工具来自上而下地设计群落。我们将微生物群落的定向进化概念化为对生态结构-功能景观的有指导的探索，并提出了在这些生态景观中进行导航的实用指南。
