AlphaDesign: a de novo protein design framework based on AlphaFold
De novo protein design is of fundamental interest to synthetic biology, with a plethora of computational methods of various degrees of generality developed in recent years. Here, we introduce AlphaDesign, a hallucination-based computational framework for de novo protein design developed with maximum generality and usability in mind, which combines AlphaFold with autoregressive diffusion models to enable rapid generation and computational validation of proteins with controllable interactions, conformations and oligomeric state without the requirement for class-dependent model re-training or fine-tuning. We apply our framework to design and systematically validate in vivo active inhibitors of a family of bacterial phage defense systems with toxic effectors called retrons, paving the way towards efficient, rational design of novel proteins as biologics.
Authors
- Kristian Schweimer (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3837-8442)
- Carlos Geert Pieter Voogdt (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2552-0059)
- Karine Lapouge (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0620-9553)
- S. Kashif Sadiq (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5112-0307)
- Michael Jendrusch (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2385-6103)
- Athanasios Typas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0797-9018)
- Elisabetta Cacace (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8239-0353)
- Janosch Hennig (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5214-7002)
- Cecilia Perez-Borrajero (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3167-7159)
- Jacob Bobonis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9293-9733)
- Kim Remans (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4394-7953)
- Sarah Kaspar (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-9745-6673)
- Jan O. Korbel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2798-3794)
- Alessio Ling Jie Yang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4981-872X)
- Jacob Scheurich (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5982-7844)
Institutions
- University of Vienna (AT)
- European Molecular Biology Organization (DE)
- Heidelberg University (DE)
- ETH Zurich (CH)
- Protein Express (United States) (US)
- Denka (Japan) (JP)
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory (DE)
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory (DE)
- University of Bayreuth (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Molecular Systems Biology
- Published
- 2025-06-17
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s44320-025-00119-z
- Citations
- 18
- Primary Topic
- Protein Structure and Dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 12.90
Funders
- Volkswagen Foundation
- Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
- HORIZON EUROPE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions