California-based artificial intelligence (AI)-first protein design company Profluent on Tuesday announced its AI model that can generate CRISPR-like proteins that do not occur in nature. CRISPR or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats is a complex containing important proteins that scientists can use for precise gene editing in organisms. The company claims that using AI, a large number of proteins can be created that can help in creating special treatments for diseases that currently remain incurable.

Ali Madani, Founder and CEO of Profluent, announces AI models in series positions On X (formerly known as Twitter). The company has also created a blog post Details of the pre-print version of the initiative and its research paper Published on bioRxiv. In addition to announcing the DNA editor-generating AI model, the company also launched one of its AI-generated gene editors, OpenCRISPR-1, as an initial open-source release, making it licensed for both ethical research and commercial use. gives.

Why does the OpenCRISPR AI model matter?

While CRISPR is a major focus of scientists, research is limited due to the protein Cas9, which acts as a gene editor, and its counterpart only being available in nature. As a result, scientists spend a lot of time exploring different types of gene editors and their effects. Profluent claims that its AI model, powered by in-house large language models (LLMs) trained on “large-scale sequence and biological context”, can now generate millions of diverse CRISPR-like proteins that do not occur in nature. Are. In theory, these synthetic gene editors could play an important role in finding cures for diseases previously considered incurable.

In its blog post, the company said, “The OpenCRISPR-1 gene editor maintains the prototypical architecture of the Type II Cas9 nuclease, but is more than 400 mutations away from SpCas9 and approximately 200 mutations away from any other known natural CRISPR-associated protein. is far.”

What is CRISPR?

CRISPR, simply put, is a complex or system found in bacteria and some other unicellular organisms. This complex consists of Cas9 (or similar proteins such as Cas12 and Cas13) proteins that have the specific ability to make precise cuts in the gene strand of DNA to enable editing. It was first discovered in 1987 and scientists have been researching it extensively since then. The technology has wide applications and has already been used to artificially create crop varieties that have high yields, are resistant to diseases and are resistant to drought.

It is also used to change the DNA of mosquitoes so that they cannot spread diseases like malaria. Experiments are being conducted to cure patients suffering from diseases like sickle cell anemia. It has also been theorized that the technology could be used to edit the DNA of fetuses to create children who are naturally resistant to diseases and have genes that confer higher physical and mental abilities. Promote.