Directed -in vitro- evolution of Precambrian and extant Rubiscos Gomez-Fernandez, Bernardo J. Garcia-Ruiz, Eva Martin-Diaz, Javier Gomez de Santos, Patricia Santos-Moriano, Paloma Plou, Francisco J. Ballesteros, Antonio Garcia, Monica Rodriguez, Marisa Risso, Valeria Alejandra Whitney, Spencer M. Alcalde, Miguel Sánchez Ruiz, José Manuel Rubisco is an ancient, catalytically conserved yet slow enzyme, which plays a central role in the biosphere’s carbon cycle. The design of Rubiscos to increase agricultural productivity has hitherto relied on the use of in vivo selection systems, precluding the exploration of biochemical traits that are not wired to cell survival. We present a directed -in vitro- evolution platform that extracts the enzyme from its biological context to provide a new avenue for Rubisco engineering. Precambrian and extant form II Rubiscos were subjected to an ensemble of directed evolution strategies aimed at improving thermostability. The most recent ancestor of proteobacteria -dating back 2.4 billion years- was uniquely tolerant to mutagenic loading. Adaptive evolution, focused evolution and genetic drift revealed a panel of thermostable mutants, some deviating from the characteristic trade-offs in CO2-fixing speed and specificity. Our findings provide a novel approach for identifying Rubisco variants with improved catalytic evolution potential. 2018-06-06T06:51:24Z 2018-06-06T06:51:24Z 2018-04-03 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Gomez-Fernandez, Bernardo J; et. al. Directed -in vitro- evolution of Precambrian and extant Rubiscos. Scientific Reports (2018) 8:5532 [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/51258] http://hdl.handle.net/10481/51258 10.1038/s41598-018-23869-3 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/es/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Atribución 3.0 España Nature Publishing Group