Adaptive Laboratory Evolution for Strain Engineering

Complex phenotypes, such as tolerance to growth inhibitors, are difficult to rationally engineer into industrial model organisms due our poor understanding of their underlying molecular mechanisms. Adaptive evolution circumvents this issue by exploiting the linkage between growth rate and inhibitor resistance to select for mutants with enhanced tolerance. In order to aid experimentalists in the design and execution of adaptive laboratory evolution, we present detailed protocols for batch, continuous, and visualizing evolution in real-time (VERT) approaches to this technique.