Ideas Lab: Use-Inspired Acceleration of Protein Design
Funding Agency:
- National Science Foundation
The U.S. National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP) is charged with accelerating use-inspired and translational research and development (R&D) to advance U.S. competitiveness in key technology focus areas.
The Use-Inspired Acceleration of Protein Design (USPRD) initiative will accelerate the translation of novel approaches to protein design and enable new applications of importance to the U.S. bioeconomy.
Significant advances have been made in the ability of researchers to predict the three-dimensional (3D) structure of proteins from primary sequence, and to use that information to design proteins with desired characteristics. These advances have been enabled by: macromolecular modeling; training data available in repositories such as the Protein Data Bank (PDB); the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning; and high-throughput protein characterization. The improved accuracy of in-silico design has reduced the number of constructs that need to be validated in costly and time-consuming “wet lab” experiments.
wards will be funded up to $3,750,000 per year for up to 3 years, commensurate with the complexity of the proposed research and development plan and the final maturity level and translational impact of the results.
The total funding available for this activity is up to $40,000,000 over 3 years.
August 30 2024
Waleed Nasser wnasser@nsf.gov (703) 292-8172 TIP/ITE