Proteins Made To Order

ananyo writes "Proteins are an enormous molecular achievement: chains of amino acids that fold spontaneously into a precise conformation, time after time, optimized by evolution for their particular function. Yet given the exponential number of contortions possible for any chain of amino acids, dictating a sequence that will fold into a predictable structure has been a daunting task. Now researchers report that they can do just that. By following a set of rules described in a paper published in Nature (abstract), a husband and wife team from David Baker's laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle has designed five proteins from scratch that fold reliably into predicted conformations. The work could eventually allow scientists to custom design proteins with specific functions."

Comments

hello --

[GPierce]

This is actually a fairly important discovery. The poster of the article seems to be completely clueless as to why it is important.

Without going into all of the details, being able to predict the shape of proteins is one of the things needed to make nanotechnology fulfill its potential - to build a nanotech "assembler".

If you want all the details you would have to go back to "Engines of Creation" by Eric Drexler.

Proteins of the right shape can be used to create complex structures - anything from a virus to a nano-computer. Construct some RNA, feed it into a cell and get back as many copies of the protein chain as you please.

Do this for several different proteins.

Leave all of these proteins in the same chemical soup and they will combine on their own to form the more complex structuresl

But if you can't predict the shape the protein folds into, you can't get started. This has been a key problem in nano-tech going back to the 1970s.