Generative AI for Controllable Protein Sequence Design: A Survey

Protein structures and functions are determined by a contiguous arrangement of amino acid sequences. Designing novel protein sequences and structures with desired geometry and functions is a complex task with large state spaces. Here we develop a novel protein design pipeline consisting of two deep learning algorithms, ProteinSolver and AlphaFold2. ProteinSolver is a deep graph neural network that generates amino acid sequences such that the forces between interacting amino acids are favorable and compatible with the fold while AlphaFold2 is a deep learning algorithm that predicts the protein structures from protein sequences. We present forty de novo designed binding sites of the PTP1B and P53 proteins with high precision, out of which thirty proteins are novel. Using ProteinSolver and AlphaFold2 in conjunction, we can trim the exploration of the large protein conformation space, thus expanding the ability to find novel and diverse de novo protein designs.

Abstract Generative models emerge as promising candidates for novel sequence-data driven approaches to protein design, and for the extraction of structural and functional information about proteins deeply hidden in rapidly growing sequence databases. Here we propose simple autoregressive models as highly accurate but computationally efficient generative sequence models. We show that they perform similarly to existing approaches based on Boltzmann machines or deep generative models, but at a substantially lower computational cost (by a factor between 10 2 and 10 3 ). Furthermore, the simple structure of our models has distinctive mathematical advantages, which translate into an improved applicability in sequence generation and evaluation. Within these models, we can easily estimate both the probability of a given sequence, and, using the model’s entropy, the size of the functional sequence space related to a specific protein family. In the example of response regulators, we find a huge …

Engineering new molecules with desirable functions and properties has the potential to extend our ability to engineer proteins beyond what nature has so far evolved. Advances in the so-called "de novo" design problem have recently been brought forward by developments in artificial intelligence. Generative architectures, such as language models and diffusion processes, seem adept at generating novel, yet realistic proteins that display desirable properties and perform specified functions. State-of-the-art design protocols now achieve experimental success rates nearing 20%, thus widening the access to de novo designed proteins. Despite extensive progress, there are clear field-wide challenges, for example in determining the best in silico metrics to prioritise designs for experimental testing, and in designing proteins that can undergo large conformational changes or be regulated by post-translational modifications and other cellular processes. With an increase in the number of models be …

The design of novel proteins has many applications but remains an attritional process with success in isolated cases. Meanwhile, deep learning technologies have exploded in popularity in recent years and are increasingly applicable to biology due to the rise in available data. We attempt to link protein design and deep learning by using variational autoencoders to generate protein sequences conditioned on desired properties. Potential copper and calcium binding sites are added to non-metal binding proteins without human intervention and compared to a hidden Markov model. In another use case, a grammar of protein structures is developed and used to produce sequences for a novel protein topology. One candidate structure is found to be stable by molecular dynamics simulation. The ability of our model to confine the vast search space of protein sequences and to scale easily has the potential to assist in a variety of protein design tasks.