How to prompt novel peptides using AI
Full disclosure, going to be linking my own project below. This info applies to other services too though, so up to you to decide what to go with.
I'm sure that everybody here's heard of Alphafold, in fact, that might be the only application of AI in biology most people know of. The last few years though, there's been quite some progress, most of it overshadowed by the rest of the AI bubble.
Protein binder generation in particular has made enormous strides. So how does this pertain to peptides? Well, peptides being the simplest proteins, it is now possible to generate a decent peptide binder to any given biological target.
A common question in the peptide space:
"Is there any peptide that does XYZ?"
The fact is, today, in ~20 minutes, you can generate a peptide against any target of your choice.
So in the coming years you can expect a lot of new stuff coming to market with most of them utilizing non-natural amino acids for patentability reasons. However, if you want to stick to the tried-and-true 20 amino acids of the human body, generating custom natural peptides with AI is now a possibility.
On drugable.bio Boltzgen, the SOTA of binder generation, has been paired with CellType, the Claude Code of biology. This means that you can with natural language ask to generate a peptide, with all the constraints and parameters of each job adjusted after what makes the most biological sense. For example, if you want to target intracellular proteins and require increased cell permeability, cyclic peptides will typically be chosen.
"If you type the perfect set of 2-50 characters into your computer, you may create a peptide that could change your entire life."