The U.S. National Science Foundation Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships is giving $32 billion to five teams involved in using artificial intelligence-based approaches to protein design.
The goal is to speed up design of novel proteins with specific, desirable characteristics.



The new funding will be for:

Purdue University — Programmable Small Molecule Biosynthesis

UC Santa Barbara — De Novo Design and Evolution of Enzymes for Biomass Upcycling to Surfactants and Fuels

Arzeda Corp. — AI-designed Enzymes using Non-natural Cofactors for the Production of Bio-based Acrylates

Koliber Biosciences Inc. — Transporters with Transformers to fix inefficient transport of small molecules across cell membranes, which constrains microbial production systems

Novozymes Inc. — Enabling Cell-free Synthesis of Longer Human Milk Oligosaccharides