DeepMind’s new AI designed enzymes from scratch, one made a chemical building block found in many medicines 99× more often than the competing product, while another broke down a plastic pollutant at 90°C where natural enzymes failed

[u/141_1337]

[u/bartturner]

This is the type of AI use that most excites me.

[u/YellowElk921 → u/bartturner]

Me too.  It's always great to read about uses of AI to accelerate science and engineering .

[u/chicken_head_ → u/bartturner]

We'll have catgirls soon enough boys!

[u/reasonmonkey → u/chicken_head_]

You'll *be* a catgirl soon enough.

[u/PracticingGoodVibes → u/reasonmonkey]

God willing

[u/Clean_Livlng → u/chicken_head_]

Plenty of women out there today who will meow a lot and also bite you.

[u/Hans-Wermhatt → u/bartturner]

It's also definitely the most dangerous aspect of AI too tbf. Controlling that level of biological manipulation is a crazy amount of power to hold.

[u/AIGODSEND → u/bartturner]

same. 99x on med building blocks and plastic-eating at 90C where natural enzymes die - no chatbot, just wetlab superpowers. this is where AI stops being tweets and starts being GDP

[u/Elephant789 → u/bartturner]

This and creating art.

[u/Commercial-Ruin7785]

one made a chemical building block found in many medicines 99× more often than the competing product

tf does this even mean

[u/01Metro → u/Commercial-Ruin7785]

Same lol what is he saying

[u/trxshdxmxn → u/01Metro]

Some enzymes can produce multiple byproducts from the same substrate, while other enzymes are more specific.

Presumably they generated a version of the enzyme with greater specificity for the target product over  the byproduct.

[u/141_1337 → u/trxshdxmxn]

Exactly, the average person is not used to meaning of specificity as a chemistry term so I tried to make it as easy to understand as possible and broke it down that way.

[u/Johnny20022002 → u/141_1337]

They really meant selectivity and not specificity because specificity refers to the substrate and not the product.

[u/redcoatwright → u/Commercial-Ruin7785]

I think it's saying this process is 99x more efficient at producing an enzyme over the current leading product.

Hell of a claim tbh

[u/stumblinbear → u/[deleted]]

Where did you see that it yielded 1%?

[u/Root-Kill-All]

Accelerateeeeeee!!!

https://giphy.com/gifs/1n4iuWZFnTeN6qvdpD

[u/ENZYME_O1]

It’s nice to get a name drop here !!

[u/141_1337]

Source(s):

https://x.com/pushmeet/status/2107128950975529455

https://github.com/google-deepmind/alphaprotein-novo

[u/bytwokaapi]

AlphaFold: “What shape will this protein have?”

AlphaProteo: “Can I make a protein that binds X?”

AlphaProtein Novo: “Can I make a protein that does chemistry X?”

[u/pcji → u/bytwokaapi]

How about we get step 1 right first? AlphaFold didn’t solve protein folding. It made strides, but that problem is far from solved.

[u/Pizza_EATR → u/pcji]

Yeah AF3 is really lacking specifically in bigger oligmeric arrangements or anything that it has nottraining data for 

[u/FlyingBishop]

This is cool, but it has the same problem as all AI-generated stuff right now. AI says something, people report as if whatever the AI said was true. What percentage of these enzymes are actually useful and do what the AI says they do? That kind of research takes years.

[u/Trubadidudei → u/FlyingBishop]

Ah but that's what isomorphic labs actually does. It's a lab, so they test their creations. The entire point of isomorphic labs is to make this process happen faster 

[u/FlyingBishop → u/Trubadidudei]

Everyone wants to do it faster. It will take years.

[u/Aranka_Szeretlek]

Neat innit

[u/FatPsychopathicWives]

We're going to end up with enzymes that make plastic into gold.

[u/141_1337 → u/FatPsychopathicWives]

Idk if things will get like that but creating an enzyme that gets rid of plastic could be really useful lol

[u/Competitive_Travel16 → u/141_1337]

Plastic-eating microbes could backfire big-time, if that's how they get delivered to e.g. landfills.

[u/AMDaze → u/Competitive_Travel16]

There's something cute and quirky about the timeline where an honest-to-god feverish plastic eater evolves/escapes... And then modern society starts to literally be eaten away as people did not realize how much intentionally permanent plastic our lives rely on.

[u/Competitive_Travel16 → u/AMDaze]

Ugh, no, what a headache.

[u/wilhelmbw → u/141_1337]

plastics and other waste can already be burnt into energy, the problem is more like the remaining pollution

[u/just-for-anime → u/FatPsychopathicWives]

speaking of there are already gold transmutation companies in the US

an acquaintance of mine started this one marathonfusion.com

[u/reasonmonkey]

Hell yes.

More of this.

[u/CyberiaCalling]

This is going to kill us all. 

[u/Illustrious_Pea_3470]

Literal actual nanotechnology

[u/reasonmonkey]

This is the foothills of the singularity right here folks.

[u/FeralPandaNuts]

I thought this was more an Isolabs thing now?

[u/felatun]

I'm worried these type of developments will lag now that Hassabis has been made to step down