EnzyHTP Computational Directed Evolution with Adaptive Resource Allocation

Abstract

Directed evolution facilitates enzyme engineering via iterative rounds of mutagenesis. Despite the wide applications of high-throughput screening, building "smart libraries" to effectively identify beneficial variants remains a major challenge in the community. Here, we developed a new computational directed evolution protocol based on EnzyHTP, a software that we have previously reported to automate enzyme modeling. To enhance the throughput efficiency, we implemented an adaptive resource allocation strategy that dynamically allocates different types of computing resources (e.g., GPU/CPU) based on the specific need of an enzyme modeling subtask in the workflow. We implemented the strategy as a Python library and tested the library using fluoroacetate dehalogenase as a model enzyme. The results show that compared to fixed resource allocation where both CPU and GPU are on-call for use during the entire workflow, applying adaptive resource allocation can save 87% CPU hours and 14% GPU hours. Furthermore, we constructed a computational directed evolution protocol under the framework of adaptive resource allocation. The workflow was tested against two rounds of mutational screening in the directed evolution experiments of Kemp eliminase (KE07) with a total of 184 mutants. Using folding stability and electrostatic stabilization energy as computational readout, we identified all four experimentally observed target variants. Enabled by the workflow, the entire computation task (i.e., 18.4 μs MD and 18,400 QM single-point calculations) completes in 3 days of wall-clock time using ∼30 GPUs and ∼1000 CPUs.