Original story from Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia). Researchers have used AI to create tiny ‘smart’ proteins that switch on only when they detect a chosen target, opening up a new generation of low-cost biosensors for medicine, environmental monitoring and biotechnology. An international team led by researchers at Queensland University of Technology (QUT; Brisbane, Australia) have shown that these AI-designed protein switches could work inside living bacterial cells and could also be linked to electrodes to generate an electrical signal, similar in principle to glucose meters. Lead author Kirill Alexandrov, from the QUT School of Biology and Environmental Science and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology, said proteins are the molecular machines that allow living cells to sense changes in their environment and respond. “One of the major goals of synthetic biology is to build protein systems that can detect molecules of interest and then trigger a useful response,” Alexandrov commented. “Until recently, protein engineers were mostly limited to adapting natural proteins found in biology. That gave us only a small set of starting options and made it very difficult to design new sensors on demand. Our study shows that AI-designed proteins can be turned into effective molecular switches, greatly expanding what protein engineers can build.” Three-in-one ‘living pharmacy’ implant produces multiple drugs inside the body A novel device that uses engineered cells to produce multiple therapies inside the body at once shows promise in animal models. The researchers used machine learning-designed binding proteins as artificial receptors and connected them…
