Biotechnology:Discovery of Enzymes by Artificial Intelligence

Associate Professor Christopher J. Vavricka, Graduate School of Science, Technology and Innovation, Kobe University, Assistant Professor Shunsuke Takahashi, Faculty of Science and Technology, Tokyo Electric University, Michihiro Araki, Deputy Director, AI Health and Pharmaceutical Research Center, Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Health and Nutrition, Kobe University A research group led by Professor Masahisa Hasunuma of the Advanced Bioengineering Research Center has succeeded in producing microorganisms for plant-derived pharmaceutical raw materials by developing a machine learning prediction model capable of discovering unknown enzymes and linking it with metabolic engineering. In the future, it is expected to accelerate the bioproduction of various useful substances, functional materials, and general-purpose chemicals. The results of this research were published in the British scientific journal Nature Communications on March 16 .With the progress of synthetic biology in recent years, microbial fermentation production of plant-derived pharmaceutical raw materials is expected. When targeting BIA, which is widely used as a raw material for analgesics, the problem was that some of the enzymes that make up the metabolic pathway were unknown. To solve the problem of enzyme discovery, we developed by biotechology a machine learning prediction model and linked it to the DBTL workflow of design ( D esign) -construction ( B uild) -evaluation ( T est) -learning ( L earn).