New B-cell directed evolution paper rediscovers a 2004 Roger Tsien idea
NikoMcCarty · x · 2026-11-14
Niko McCarty tells a greentext story about old ideas in biology:
- A new paper borrows somatic hypermutation from B cells for directed evolution: put a gene into B cells, add a short DNA stretch upstream to recruit antibody-making machinery, let cells mutate, and sort the best ones via flow cytometry
- This yielded flu-antibody variants with 3x better binding, with no need to build and clone mutant libraries each round
- But Roger Tsien did the exact same thing in 2004 to evolve fluorescent proteins (the origin of mPlum and mRaspberry) — 22 years ago
Broader pattern: Crick called for controlling neurons in 1979 and explicitly proposed light as the signal by 1999, years before optogenetics was "invented"; Zymark promised fully automated labs in the 1980s. Ideas in biology repeat themselves — most ideas are much older than people think.
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