AI Creates Custom Cell Hunters To Destroy Incurable Diseases
Researchers have used generative AI to design entirely new protein-cutting enzymes from scratch, overcoming a longstanding challenge in computational biology. The synthetic enzymes, known as proteases, can recognize and cut specific sequences of amino acids, potentially giving scientists a powerful new way to manipulate biological processes, and eventually, develop treatments for diseases caused by proteins, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and even type-2 diabetes.
The research, published in Natureyesterday and titled "De novo design of cysteine proteases", was led by scientists at the University of Washington who used AI protein-design tools to generate three-dimensional protein structures and amino-acid sequences capable of performing the necessary chemistry. Proteases work by breaking peptide bonds, the chemical links that hold proteins together. Although nature is full of enzymes capable of doing this—and doing it better than these synthetic ones—designing entirely new proteases has proved exceptionally difficult because peptide bonds are remarkably stable and require carefully...
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