US Patent Issued to President and Fellows of Harvard College on July 22 for "Continuous directed evolution" (Massachusetts Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,366,009, issued on July 22, was assigned to President and Fellows of Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.).

"Continuous directed evolution" was invented by David R. Liu (Cambridge, Mass.), Kevin Michael Esvelt (Cambridge, Mass.) and Jacob Charles Carlson (Cambridge, Mass.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The invention provides systems, methods, reagents, apparatuses, vectors, and host cells for the continuous evolution of nucleic acids. For example, a lagoon is provided in which a population of viral vectors comprising a gene of interest replicates in a stream of host cells, wherein the viral vectors lack a gene encoding a protein required fo...