Hostilis_ t1_j5r9xml wrote
Reply to comment by funkyrdaughter in Seven technologies to watch in 2023: tools and techniques that are poised to have an outsized impact on science. by Vucea
It required extremely costly, elaborate experiments. The problem is that proteins are generally too small to see with a microscope. In order to get the structure, you essentially had to create a crystal of the purified protein of interest (which is not always possible or practical), and then shoot x-rays at the crystal to create a diffraction pattern. Then you could use software to reconstruct the structure of the protein.
And yes that's exactly right. Now that it's possible to predict the structure nearly instantly, you can now create recipes for custom proteins that can have whatever properties you want.
funkyrdaughter t1_j5rc0bv wrote
Oh ok that’s pretty cool. So we basically just gained a bunch of information we didn’t have before and save on resources time and labor. I didn’t realize it was so hard to see proteins. Since they are so hard to see how do we know we have all the human proteins. Are they just brute force scanning things in the human body?
Hostilis_ t1_j5rc8na wrote
They're all (ostensibly) encoded by our genome
funkyrdaughter t1_j5rd0he wrote
Oh so basically looking at dna we can see all the possible proteins that we have the ability to create? I wasn’t sure if they did some like Lego stuff and some proteins naturally conjoined to other to form even more proteins but then I guess with the technology you still be able to figure out possible combinations based on their shapes. I’m surprised this isn’t talked about more. Does this mean we would also be able to create proteins that could get rid of the stuff our body doesn’t naturally break down? I read an article on the immortal jellyfish. If they had their genome sequenced couldn’t they see all the proteins and make a conjecture based on shape to see which ones are responsible for the “reverse aging”
Hostilis_ t1_j5re6re wrote
As far as I understand, immune system proteins can have these "Lego brick" type combinations, but they're the exception. Most proteins are directly encoded by the DNA.
And yeah it's absolutely possible that we could engineer proteins to get rid of toxic stuff in our bodies. Solving aging is a bit more difficult because it involves how lots of proteins and genes interact with each other, but even then AI (deep neural networks) could probably help a ton.
funkyrdaughter t1_j5rfesq wrote
From the dna perspective is aging just telomeres and methylation?
Hostilis_ t1_j5rmgkc wrote
Those are two big pieces to aging, but not the whole picture. I'm not an expert, but I think oxidation and accumulation of damage to proteins and DNA are also very important and will be much more difficult to handle.
Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments