The work was led by @adambroerman.bsky.social at @uwproteindesign.bsky.social!

@martinpacesa.bsky.social @sokrypton.org @pranam.bsky.social

Given the high uptake for a “Cas9 look-alike,” the team is inspired to expand toward new territories, including base editors, prime editors, large insertion techniques, and more to demonstrate the generalizability of its protein design platform. 4/4

Since OpenCRISPR-1's open source release in April 2024, tens of thousands of academic and industry researchers have accessed the sequence across a variety of verticals, from developing drought-resistant crops to drug discovery. 3/

Despite being hundreds of mutations away from any known natural protein. Profluent's LLM generated CRISPR proteins show improved activity, specificity, and immunogenicity relative to naturally occurring gene editors. 2/

As a baseline, competitors will initially go head-to-head with Arc’s first virtual cell model, STATE, which is designed to predict how various stem cells, cancer cells, and immune cells respond to drugs, cytokines, or genetic perturbations. 3/3

The initiative is a step toward virtual cell benchmarking and acceleration, and follows in the footsteps of the CASP competition, the biannual experiment that assesses the latest state-of-the-art models in protein structure prediction, which enabled Nobel Prize-winning, AlphaFold. 2/

More in GEN from @faylinphd.bsky.social: www.genengnews.com/topics/artif...

In collaboration with @recursionpharma.bsky.social, the work was led by Gabriele Corso @gcorso.bsky.social, Saro Passaro, and Jeremy Wohlwend from the lab of Regina Barzilay at @mit.edu!