Protein Engineering – A New Frontier
I Decided to keep this default title as I think it fits here.
Many years ago I became interested in protein engineering.
I was needed to alter some proteins involved biomineralization. I know of a few proteins involved in sillification. These proteins would have to be altered or new proteins created that could deposit a related material.
The main proteins come from Diatoms.
Diatoms use silicification for their cell wall during reproduction. The silicification occurs in their silicon deposition vesicle. Silicic acid is transformed into silica for the Diatoms glass cell wall.
The mechanism for silicification were not entirely known on the level of amino acid sequences. There had been papers on the how the diatom creates its daughter cells and their amazing cell walls.
Computers have been more able to create models and humans have been crowd sourced to help solve molecular configurations for these proteins.
If the quantum computers that Google and others are working on come out. Read this article from Peter Diamandis for more on that. The ability to do protein engineering will proceed with leaps and bounds. The reason for this is that quantum computers should be able to solve for all the possible configurations with relative ease. Meaning that not only can you simple see if that configuation will work you will be able to make aterations to the primary structure and do another simulation.
Look for that in about 3 years and on. so in the early 2020's protein engineering will hit a new stride. A protein revolution?
My plan is to keep updating this to the point that I left the project at. Then I'll make a new post with future plans.