PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Appel, Mason J.
AU  - Longwell, Scott A.
AU  - Morri, Maurizio
AU  - Neff, Norma
AU  - Herschlag, Daniel
AU  - Fordyce, Polly M.
TI  - uPIC–M: efficient and scalable preparation of clonal single mutant libraries for high-throughput protein biochemistry
AID  - 10.1101/2021.08.04.455146
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.08.04.455146
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/08/04/2021.08.04.455146.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/08/04/2021.08.04.455146.full
AB  - New high-throughput biochemistry techniques complement selection-based approaches and provide quantitative kinetic and thermodynamic data for thousands of protein variants in parallel. With these advances, library generation rather than data collection has become rate limiting. Unlike pooled selection approaches, high-throughput biochemistry requires mutant libraries in which individual sequences are rationally designed, efficiently recovered, sequence-validated, and separated from one another, but current strategies are unable to produce these libraries at the needed scale and specificity at reasonable cost. Here, we present a scalable, rapid, and inexpensive approach for creating User-designed Physically Isolated Clonal–Mutant (uPIC–M) libraries that utilizes recent advances in oligo synthesis, high-throughput sample preparation, and next-generation sequencing. To demonstrate uPIC–M, we created a scanning mutant library of SpAP, a 541 amino acid alkaline phosphatase, and recovered 94% of desired mutants in a single iteration. uPIC–M uses commonly available equipment and freely downloadable custom software and can produce a 5000 mutant library at 1/3 the cost and 1/5 the time of traditional techniques.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.