The building blocks of life-saving therapeutics could be developed in days instead of years thanks to new software that simulates evolution.<\/p>\n
Proseeker is the name of a new computational tool that mimics the processes of natural selection, producing proteins that can be used for a range of medicinal and household uses.<\/p>\n
The enzymes in your laundry detergent, the insulin in your diabetes medication or the antibodies used in cancer therapy are currently made in the laboratory using a painstaking process called directed evolution.<\/p>\n
Laboratory evolution mimics natural evolution by making mutations in naturally-sourced proteins and selecting the best mutants, to be mutated and selected again, in a time-intensive and laborious process that creates useful proteins.<\/p>\n
Scientists at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Synthetic Biology have now discovered a way to perform the entire process of directed evolution using a computer. It can reduce the time required from many months or even years to just days.<\/p>\n
The team was led by Professor Oliver Rackham, Â鶹ֱ²¥, in collaboration with Professor Aleksandra Filipovska, the University of Western Australia, and is based at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research in Perth, Western Australia.<\/p>\n
To prove how useful this process could be they took a protein with no function at all and gave it the ability to bind DNA.<\/p>\n
\u2018Proteins that bind DNA are currently revolutionising the field of gene therapy where scientists are using them to reverse disease-causing mutations,\u2019 says Professor Rackham. \u2018So this could be of great use in the future.<\/p>\n
\u2018Reconstituting the entire process of directed evolution represents a radical advance for the field.\u2019<\/p>\n