Researchers at Scripps Research led by Peter Schultz developed T7-ORACLE, a synthetic biology system that accelerates directed evolution of proteins within living cells by harnessing an error-prone T7 bacteriophage replisome. This continuous evolution method enables rapid generation of protein variants, exemplified by enhancing beta-lactamase variants conferring antibiotic resistance. The advancement promises to expedite engineering of therapeutic proteins against diseases including cancer and neurodegeneration.