(70a) Invited Talk: Exploring the Evolution Multiverse: Advanced Platforms for Biomolecular Engineering

Evolution, the process by which all life adapts and survives against relentless selection pressure, is a pivotal force in disease pathology, particularly in immunology and cancer—sometimes to our detriment. In the laboratory, harnessing this powerful force through directed evolution has become a cornerstone in engineering proteins and RNA. However, replicating the full complexity of natural selection remains a challenge. Our laboratory has developed an advanced high-throughput platform that integrates phage-assisted continuous evolution (PACE) with a custom, open-source robotics system, PyHamilton. This platform offers precise control over evolutionary pressures, enabling us to simultaneously explore multiple evolutionary trajectories—an evolution multiverse—across diverse biomolecules, including (but not limited to) antibody fragments, proteases, and non-canonical amino acids, on an unprecedented physical and in silico scale. In this talk, I will explore how this technology is expanding our ability to navigate and manipulate the evolution multiverse, creating new opportunities for protein design and therapeutic development. By automating and fine-tuning evolutionary experiments, we are pushing the boundaries of what is possible in bioengineering, with wide-reaching implications for biotechnology and medicine.