Patent ID: 8108150

Claim:
A method of directing evolution using the fitness of multiple potential crossover points on a reference peptide sequence of a reference peptide, the method comprising: (a) for each potential crossover point of the multiple potential crossover points on the reference peptide sequence, calculating an overall value of a fitness parameter for a potential crossover point under consideration from multiple individual values of the fitness parameter for multiple chimeras having the potential crossover point under consideration, wherein each of the multiple individual values is associated with one of multiple different chimeras having the potential crossover point under consideration; (b) based on the respective overall values of the fitness parameter for the potential crossover points, choosing an actual crossover point for a chimeric peptide comprising a partial sequence of the reference peptide sequence; (c) selecting one or more product chimeric peptides or nucleic acids encoding the chimeric peptides having the actual crossover point; and (d) performing one or more diversity generating operations using the one or more product chimeric peptides or nucleic acids encoding the chimeric peptides from (c) to produce at least one diversified peptide or nucleic acid encoding a diversified peptide having the actual crossover point, wherein one or more of operations (a)-(c) are performed by executing instructions on a computer system programmed to perform said operations.