Schmied, W. J.; Tnimov, Z.; Uttamapinant, C.; Rae, C. D.; Fried, S. D.; Chin, J. W. “Controlling orthogonal ribosome subunit interactions enables evolution of new function.” Nature 2018, 564, 444-448. [DOI]
We devised a way to control and enforce interactions between the large and small ribosomal subunits in E. coli by optimizing a ‘staple’ (linker) between the two of them. This development facilitates directed evolution on both subunits, and is a step toward creating ribosomes that can synthesize new unnatural polymers.
A perspective is available on the MRC LMB website.