Can synthetic polymers replace the body's natural proteins?
March 20, 2023
Most life on Earth is based on polymers of 20 amino acids that have evolved into hundreds of thousands of different, highly specialized proteins. They catalyze reactions, form backbone and muscle and even generate movement.
Ting Xu, a University of California, Berkeley, polymer scientist, thinks so. She has developed a way to mimic specific functions of natural proteins using only two, four or six different building blocks—ones currently used in plastics—and found that these alternative polymers work as well as the real protein and are a lot easier to synthesize than trying to replicate nature's design.
As a proof of concept, she used her design method, which is based on machine learning or artificial intelligence, to synthesize polymers that mimic blood plasma. The artificial biological fluid kept natural protein biomarkers intact without refrigeration and even made the natural proteins more resistant to high temperatures—an improvement over real blood plasma.
