Scientists Are Designing Artisanal Proteins for Your Body
- 6 years ago
Scientists Are Designing Artisanal Proteins for Your Body
When Dr. Baker attended graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, no one knew
how to look at a chain of amino acids and predict the shape into which it would fold.
“When people want a new protein, they look around in nature for things that already exist,” Dr. Baker said.
Dr. Baker’s team used Rosetta to design such a protein, narrowing their search to several thousand of chains of amino acids that might do the job.
To Dr. Baker and many other protein scientists, however, this sort tinkering has been deeply unsatisfying.
When Dr. Baker attended graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, no one knew
how to look at a chain of amino acids and predict the shape into which it would fold.
“When people want a new protein, they look around in nature for things that already exist,” Dr. Baker said.
Dr. Baker’s team used Rosetta to design such a protein, narrowing their search to several thousand of chains of amino acids that might do the job.
To Dr. Baker and many other protein scientists, however, this sort tinkering has been deeply unsatisfying.