Scientists from Northwestern Engineering and Stanford University have made a breakthrough in the creation of amide bonds, a fundamental component of many natural and synthetic materials. Amide bonds are used in proteins, pharmaceuticals, and everyday products like agrochemicals, fragrances, and flavors. Researchers, led by Ashty Karim and Michael Jewett, have developed a platform to engineer enzymes responsible for forming amide bonds, which could revolutionize the field of green chemistry. The platform uses a novel high-throughput, cell-free, and machine-learning-guided approach to rapidly generate large datasets and predict the function of enzymes. The team used this platform to engineer 1,217 mutants of an amide synthetase enzyme, McbA, to form nine small molecule pharmaceuticals. This achievement demonstrates the versatility of McbA to catalyze many unique reactions and the ability to rapidly build specialized biocatalysts in parallel. The researchers believe that this work has the potential to transform the bioeconomy across various industries in energy, materials, and medicine. However, more research is needed to improve the approach and explore new artificial intelligence methods to create new-to-nature proteins.
Revolutionizing Sustainability: ML-Guided Enzyme Engineering for a Greener Tomorrow
