AI could accelerate protein engineering

In a study published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, Sheffield computer scientists in collaboration with AstraZeneca and the University of Southampton have developed a new machine learning framework that has shown the potential to be more accurate at inverse protein folding than existing state-of-the-art methods.

Inverse protein folding is a critical process for creating novel proteins. It is the process of identifying amino acid sequences, the building blocks of proteins, that fold into a desired 3D protein structure and enable the protein to perform specific functions. Protein engineering plays a critical role in drug…