Generation of highly diverse peptide library by linear-double-stranded DNA based AND gate genetic circuit in mammalian cells

Abstract DNA-encoded peptide libraries are ideal functional peptide discovery platforms for their extremely large capacity. However, it’s still difficult to build high content peptide library in intact mammalian cells, which offer advantages associated with appropriate protein modification, proper protein folding, and natural status of membrane protein. Our previous work established linear-double-stranded DNAs (ldsDNAs) as innovative biological parts to implement AND gate genetic circuits in mammalian cell line. In the current study, we employ ldsDNA with terminal NNK degenerate codons as AND gate input to build highly diverse peptide library in mammalian cells. This ldsDNA-based AND gate (LBAG) peptide strategy is easy to conduct, only PCR reaction and cell transfection experiments are needed. High-throughput sequencing (HTS) results reveal that our new LBAG strategy could generate peptide library with both amino acid sequence and peptide length diversities. Moreover, by a mammalian cell two-hybrid system, we pan an MDM2 protein interacting peptide through the LBAG peptide library. Our work establishes ldsDNA as biological parts for building highly diverse peptide library in mammalian cells.