Abstract
Mutagenesis provides insight into proteins, but only recently have assays that couple genotype to phenotype been used to assess the activities of as many as 1 million mutant versions of a protein in a single experiment. This approach—'deep mutational scanning'—yields large-scale data sets that can reveal intrinsic protein properties, protein behavior within cells and the consequences of human genetic variation. Deep mutational scanning is transforming the study of proteins, but many challenges must be tackled for it to fulfill its promise.
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Acknowledgements
We thank A. Merz, M. Hochstrasser, C. Queitsch, A. Gitler, J. Bloom, E. Marcotte, E. Phizicky and M. Wickens for helpful discussions and comments. This work was supported by P41 GM103533 (to S.F.) and F32 GM084699 (to D.M.F.) from the US National Institute of General Medical Sciences. S.F. is supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
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Fowler, D., Fields, S. Deep mutational scanning: a new style of protein science. Nat Methods 11, 801–807 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3027
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.3027
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