Artificial intelligence makes enzyme engineering easy

You can't move a pharmaceutical scientist from a lab to a kitchen and expect the same research output. Enzymes behave exactly the same: They are dependent upon a specific environment. But now, in a study recently published in ACS Synthetic Biology, researchers from Osaka University have imparted an analogous level of adaptability to enzymes, a goal that has remained elusive for over 30 years. Enzymes perform impressive functions, enabled by the unique arrangement of their constituent amino acids, but usually only within a specific cellular environment. When you change the cellular environment, the enzyme rarely functions well--if at all.