Hijacking host RNA polymerase for processive in situ mutagenesis
Yuou Sheng, Huizhen Ni, Shihao Yang, Wenliang Hao, Chong Zhang · 2026
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Description
Yuou Sheng and colleagues built a tool in 2026 that turns a bacterium's own transcription machinery into a mutation writer for directed evolution. Continuous evolution inside living cells needs targeted mutagenesis over long stretches of DNA, but existing methods are inefficient, finicky about the host, complicated to run, or patchy in where the mutations land. Their system, TAMER, fuses a deaminase enzyme and a guide protein to the omega subunit of the cell's native RNA polymerase, so mutations are written wherever transcription is directed.
The reported performance is striking: a mutation rate hundreds of thousands of times above the natural background, spread evenly across a broad target window, with low off-target damage. The tool also travels between hosts, since it borrows the polymerase the host already owns rather than importing foreign machinery. The authors present TAMER as a simple, general platform for evolving genes in place.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yuou Sheng, Huizhen Ni, Shihao Yang, Wenliang Hao, Chong Zhang |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 28 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |