The present invention relates to a method for
in vitro creation of molecular libraries evolution of
protein function. Particularly, it relates to variability and modification of
protein function by
shuffling polynucleotide sequence segments. A
protein of desired characteristics can be obtained by incorporating variant
peptide regions (variant motifs) into defined
peptide regions (
scaffold sequence). The variant motifs can be obtained from parent
DNA which has been subjected to
mutagenesis to create a plurality of differently mutated derivatives thereof or they can be obtained from
in vivo sequences. These variant motifs can then be incorporated into a
scaffold sequence and the resulting coded protein screened for desired characteristics. This method is ideally used for obtaining antibodies with desired characteristics by isolating individual CDR
DNA sequences and incorporating them into a
scaffold which may, for example, be from a totally different
antibody.