AI plus gene editing promises to shift biotech into high gear
New London, US: During her chemistry Nobel Prize lecture in 2018, Frances Arnold said, “Today we can for all practical purposes read, write and edit any sequence of DNA, but we cannot compose it.” That isn’t true anymore.
Since then, science and technology have progressed so much that artificial intelligence has learned to compose DNA, and with genetically modified bacteria, scientists are on their way to designing and making bespoke proteins.
The goal is that with AI’s designing talents and gene editing’s engineering abilities, scientists can modify bacteria to act as mini factories producing new proteins that can reduce greenhouse gases, digest plastics or act as species-specific pesticides.
As a chemistry professor and computational chemist who studies molecular science and environmental chemistry, I believe that advances in AI and gene editing make this a realistic possibility.
All living things contain genetic materials – DNA and RNA – that provide the hereditary information needed to replicate themselves and make proteins. Proteins constitute 75 per cent of human dry weight. They make up muscles, enzymes, hormones, blood, hair and cartilage. Understanding proteins means understanding much of biology. The order of nucleotide bases in DNA, or RNA in some viruses, encodes this information, and genomic sequencing technologies identify the order of these bases.
