AI Biodesign Could Unlock New Medicines, Cleaner Enzymes, and Biological Computers

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are the risks of designing biological molecules that do not exist in nature?

Jorge Garay: AI biodesign aims to explore the potential of molecules and biological functions that have never existed in nature. Are there special risks associated with entering this uncharted territory? How can scientists predict those risks and minimize them before designed molecules leave the lab?

David Baker: The interesting thing about biology is that nature has explored only a fraction of what is physically and chemically possible. That opens up a vast range of possibilities for us to design. The main risks are not much different from those associated with other new biological technologies, including unintended interactions with living systems, unexpected environmental effects, and misuse.

The advantage we have today is that computational design allows us to assess many of these risks before a molecule is synthesized. We can computationally screen designs, test them extensively in laboratory environments, and carry out increasingly realistic experimental validation before considering real-world applications.

How far could AI-designed molecules take us?

Jorge Garay: The project describes possibilities ranging from new drugs and plastic-degrading enzymes to biological computers. As predictive power improves for designing new molecules and biological functions, how far do you think this technology could take us?

David Baker: My team and I have ambitious goals for protein design. We are working to build a world where treatments for new diseases are created in weeks rather than decades; where our air, water, and soil are clean because we remove pollutants and rethink the processes that contaminate them; and where crops can grow in environments where they once became extinct.

We also envision a future in which molecular machines extract vital minerals from waste and repair the infrastructure we depend on.

Why protein design matters

Proteins are the molecular machines developed by life to create all the organic matter we know on Earth. To realize their full potential, we need to derive engineering principles that enable innovative ideas, including possibilities we cannot yet imagine.