In a related post on Biology-SE the following insightful comment was made:
The advantage of DNA shuffling over introducing single mutations is that you have to screen fewer mutants and the activity/stability of the protein could be improved several hundred fold more.
Is there a mathematical argument as to why DNA Shuffling should be more efficient than introducing point mutations?
Even supposing each DNA Shuffling / Point Mutation step is equally "expensive" (and in reality DNA shuffling seems much more work) they are both generating one variant per-step, right? So why is the variant in one case grossly better than the other?
Related Post: Directed evolution: Point mutation vs Insertion-Deletion vs Shuffling