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It can be an aid in drug development, and can perhaps assist a bit in tuning small molecule drugs for more stable binding. Though I think the major impacts wil
by zosima 5y ago
It can be an aid in drug development, and can perhaps assist a bit in tuning small molecule drugs for more stable binding.
Though I think the major impacts will be two-fold:
(1) The field of structural biology is going to see a change, with much more data available. Some structures of difficult to crystallize proteins will be solved, which may lead to much greater biological understanding. We may enter a time, where once you have a primary sequence, you also have a likely 3d-structure, which will probably change the daily work of quite a few biologists a bit.
(2) Industrial protein design. A tool such as this can potentially have great utility in optimizing proteins as chemical catalysts for various processes in different industries. This includes expanding the conditions under which a protein is active and also making their conformation more stable and so the protein more long-lived in solution.
- dekhn 5y agoFor those that are unaware, industrial protein design is a multibillion dollar industry. For example, decades ago Genentech and Dow Corning formed a company that developed proteases (proteins that cut other proteins) that worked at much higher temperatures than the ones in nature. This was then sold to P&G and other major laundry companies (laundry detergent contains idle enzymes activated by the heat of the laundry water, and they go clean up. "Protein gets out protein" was the marketing jingle. That was a few billion dollars right there and almost all the work was done by hand by lab scientists.