a, Scheme of the deep mutational scanning assay.
Conformationally intact RBD is expressed on the surface of yeast, where RBD
expression and antibody binding is detectable via fluorescent labeling. We
previously constructed mutant libraries containing virtually all of the
3,819 possible amino acid mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 RBD26 and sorted the library to
eliminate mutations that destabilize the RBD or strongly reduce ACE2-binding
affinity3. We
incubate the library with a sub-saturating antibody concentration and use
fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) to isolate yeast cells expressing
RBD mutants with reduced antibody binding. Deep sequencing quantifies mutant
frequencies before and after FACS selection, enabling calculation of the
“escape fraction” of each amino acid mutation, which reflects
the fraction of cells carrying that mutation that fall into the
antibody-escape bin. Mutation escape fractions are represented in logoplots,
where the height of a letter reflects the extent of escape from antibody
binding. b, Representative selection gates, after gating for
single cells expressing RBD as in Greaney et al.3. Yeast expressing the SARS-CoV-2 RBD
(top panels) are labeled at 1x, 0.01x and no antibody to guide selection
gates. Mutant RBDs that reduce binding (green, gate drawn to capture 0.01x
WT control) are sorted and sequenced for calculation of mutant escape
fractions. This same gate was used to quantify escape within libraries of
yeast expressing all sarbecovirus RBD homologs. For several antibodies, we
also selected the sarbecovirus RBD library with a more stringent
“full escape” gate (blue, gate drawn to capture 0 ng/mL WT
control). c, Fraction of library cells falling into escape bins
for each antibody selection. d, Line plots showing total escape
at all RBD sites for each antibody. Sites of strong escape illustrated in
logoplots in Fig. 1b,c shown with pink indicators.
e,f, Correlation in per-mutation
(e) and per-site (f, sum of per-mutation)
escape fractions for duplicate libraries that were independently generated
and assayed. N, number of mutations (e) or
sites (f) in the correlation.