That being said, as others have commented, my hopes are that all these advancements lead finally to reliable design methods for novel biocatalysts, an area that has been stalling for decades, compared to protein folds and binders.
That being said, as others have commented, my hopes are that all these advancements lead finally to reliable design methods for novel biocatalysts, an area that has been stalling for decades, compared to protein folds and binders.
David Baker’s lab has recently published on using their own diffusion model (RFdiffusion) to design novel biocatalysts that perform hydrolysis using a catalytic triad of serine, aspartic acid, and histidine, as well as an oxyanion hole, which is much more complex than the binders designed by AlphaProteo [1].
It gives me hope that we’ll soon be able to design biocatalysts as good as natural ones, but for any problem we care about.
1. https://alexcarlin.bearblog.dev/novel-enzymes-from-a-diffusi...