A single test tube can now evolve new industrial enzymes at a speed of over 100 million events every second.
This new screening platform creates high-efficiency catalysts without using any living cells or expensive robotic hardware. Previous methods for directed evolution required massive laboratory setups and weeks of work to find a single useful mutation. This system performs over 100 million chemical experiments every second inside a simple liquid mixture. It effectively automates the process of natural selection to find perfect molecular tools for manufacturing and medicine. Anyone with basic lab equipment could soon design custom enzymes to break down plastics or create new drugs. This technology makes high-speed molecular engineering accessible to every researcher on the planet.
Genuine Directed Evolution In Test Tube (GENie)
bioRxiv · 10.64898/2026.05.04.722721
Directed evolution has long been constrained by complex screening hardware and labor-intensive workflows. Here, we report the first genuine test-tube screening platform that uses His6-tagged peptide-functionalized magnetic beads and Fe3+-decorated E. coli cells to establish a phenotype-genotype linkage, thereby decoupling ultrahigh-throughput screening from specialized instrumentation and democratizing directed evolution. The platform demonstrated a screening throughput of > 108 events s-1 and a