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Researchers use AI to design proteins that block snake venom toxins

It’s a good example of how computer developments can be used for practical problems.

A team that includes the University of Washington's David Baker, who picked up his Nobel in Stockholm last month, used software tools to design completely new proteins that are able to inhibit some of the toxins in snake venom. Having smaller, more stable proteins that perform the same function would let us produce them in bacteria and could allow the generation of an antivenon that doesn't require refrigeration—a careful consideration given that many snake bites occur in rural areas or the wilderness. Their three-dimensional structure, which is key to their ability to bind these receptors, is based on three strings of amino acids within the protein that nestle against each other (for those that have taken a sufficiently advanced biology class, these are anti-parallel beta sheets).

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