Patent ID: 7223539

Claim:
A method of identifying a nucleic acid multicomponent construct having a desired biological activity from a library of nucleic acid constructs, comprising: (a) generating a combinatorial library comprising a variegated population of nucleic acid multicomponent constructs, wherein the library is generated by the following steps: (i) providing at least three different nucleic acid components, each comprising at least one genetic element providing a functionality and at least one single stranded 5′ or 3′ terminal sequence, wherein the terminal sequence hybridizes to either a terminal sequence in another of said nucleic acid components or to a nucleic acid adaptor molecule that is supplied in addition to the nucleic acid components; (ii) incubating the nucleic acid components under conditions which allow for combinatorial annealing and linkage of said at least three different nucleic acid components and nucleic acid adaptor molecules to thereby produce the library comprising a variegated population of nucleic acid multicomponent constructs, wherein each nucleic acid multicomponent construct comprises at least three different functionalities; (b) expressing the library in cells; and (c) identifying members of the library that, when expressed in the cells, produce a desired biological activity.