Large Phenotypic Enhancement of Structured Random RNA Pools.

Laboratory evolution of functional RNAs has applications in many areas of chemical and synthetic biology. In vitro selections critically depend on the presence of functional molecules, such as aptamers and ribozymes, in the starting sequence pools. For selection of novel functions the pools are typically transcribed from random-sequence DNA templates, yielding a highly diverse set of RNAs that contain a multitude of folds and biochemical activities.