Evolutionary approaches have been providing solutions to various bioengineering challenges in an efficient manner. In addition to traditional adaptive laboratory evolution and directed evolution, recent advances in synthetic biology and fluidic systems have opened a new era of evolutionary engineering. Synthetic genetic circuits have been created to control mutagenesis and enable screening of various phenotypes, particularly metabolite production. Fluidic systems can be used for high-throughput screening and multiplexed continuous cultivation of microorganisms. Moreover, continuous directed evolution has been achieved by combining all the steps of evolutionary engineering. Overall, modern tools and systems for evolutionary engineering can be used to establish the artificial equivalent to natural evolution for various research applications.
Keywords: Continuous evolution; Evolutionary engineering; High-throughput screening; Mutagenesis; Selection.