MIT chemists have devised a way to rapidly synthesize and screen millions of novel proteins that could be used as drugs against Ebola and other viruses.
All proteins produced by living cells are made from the 20 amino acids that are programmed by the genetic code. The MIT team came up with a way to assemble proteins from amino acids not used in nature, including many that are mirror images of natural amino acids.
These proteins, which the researchers call "xenoproteins," offer many advantages over naturally occurring proteins. They are more stable, meaning that unlike most protein drugs, they don't require refrigeration, and may not provoke an immune response.
"There is no other technological platform that can be used to create these xenoproteins because people haven't worked through the ability to use completely nonnatural sets of amino acids throughout the entire shape of the molecule," says Brad Pentelute, an MIT associate professor of chemistry and the senior author of the paper, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of May 21.
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