12.05.2022: Publication Alert - Dawn of a New Era for Membrane Protein Design
Approximately one-third of all human proteins are located in membranes. However, due to the difficulty in solving membrane protein structures, they have received relatively little attention by the protein design community, as typical protein design pipelines require high-quality structures as a starting point.
Abstract:
A major advancement has recently occurred in the ability to predict protein secondary structure from sequence using artificial neural networks. This new accessibility to high-quality predicted structures provides a big opportunity for the protein design community. It is particularly welcome for membrane protein design, where the scarcity of solved structures has been a major limitation of the field for decades. Here, we review the work done to date on the membrane protein design and set out established and emerging tools that can be used to most effectively exploit this new access to structures.