Computational Design of Optimal Sequences for Targeted Hypermutagenesis Using Recombination-Coupled Diversity-Generating Retroelements

Authors

Regnier, L., Rochette, P., Laurenceau, R., Monasson, R., Bikard, D., Cocco, S.

Abstract

Diversity-generating retroelements (DGRs) are natural systems that accelerate evolution via targeted hypermutation at adenines. We previously developed DGRec, a system combining DGRs and recombineering for programmable mutagenesis in Escherichia coli. We here address two important issues with DGRec: the dependence of mutagenesis efficiency on the dgrRNA secondary structure and the variability of the reverse-transcription biases with sequence context and position. First, we introduce and validate a method to recode non-functional templates, i.e. with low mutagenesis efficiency, into highly functional ones through synonymous mutations. Second, we develop a Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model to predict DGRec mutational profiles for any given template sequence. By integrating this LSTM model with our recoding method, we establish a comprehensive workflow for customized directed evolution, enabling researchers to precisely fine-tune DGRec in vivo mutagenesis to their engineering needs.

Preprint server: bioRxiv
The authors list and abstract were imported from bioRxiv on 14 Jun 2026.

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