Article: AI has designed bacteria-killing proteins from scratch – and they work

Unfortunately, the article is behind a pay wall, but what is visible is tantalizing:

An AI was tasked with creating proteins with anti-microbial properties. Researchers then created a subset of the proteins and found some did the job

An AI has designed anti-microbial proteins that were then tested in real life and shown to work. The same approach could eventually be used to make new medicines.

Proteins are made of chains of amino acids. The sequence of those acids determine the protein’s shape and function.

Ali Madani at Profluent, a biotechnology start-up in California, and his colleagues used an AI to design millions of new proteins, then created a small sample of those to test whether they worked.

The potential to use AI to target proteins and pathways in bacterial disease may keep us apace of the changes that nature builds continues to build into bacteria, and may ultimately produce new antibiotics. It will be interesting to see whom the company partners with to screen these compounds for safety and efficacy before entering animal and human trials.