title: The coming of age of de novo protein design.
abstract: There are 20(200) possible amino-acid sequences for a 200-residue protein, of which the natural evolutionary process has sampled only an infinitesimal subset. De novo protein design explores the full sequence space, guided by the physical principles that underlie protein folding. Computational methodology has advanced to the point that a wide range of structures can be designed from scratch with atomic-level accuracy. Almost all protein engineering so far has involved the modification of naturally occurring proteins; it should now be possible to design new functional proteins from the ground up to tackle current challenges in biomedicine and nanotechnology.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.|Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.|Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
authors.forename: Po-Ssu
authors.initials: PS
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.|Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.|Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
authors.forename: Scott E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Boyken
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.|Institute for Protein Design, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.|Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Baker
mesh_terms: D001703:Biophysics; D019295:Computational Biology; D015195:Drug Design; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry; D017510:Protein Folding; D055550:Protein Stability; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins