QUT Team Turns AI Proteins Into Molecular Sensors
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- QUT researchers published findings in Nature Biotechnology showing AI-designed proteins can act as molecular switches that activate upon detecting a chosen target, with potential applications in medicine, environmental monitoring and biotechnology.
- Professor Kirill Alexandrov of QUT's School of Biology and Environmental Science led the team, which demonstrated the switches work inside living bacterial cells and can be linked to electrodes to produce electrical signals similar in principle to glucose meters.
- The researchers paired machine learning-designed binding proteins with enzymes that generate measurable outputs including color changes, light emission and electrical signals, making the switches adaptable to different sensing technologies.
- The study challenges the widely held belief that sensing proteins must undergo large shape changes to function as switches — Alexandrov said the artificial receptors only need subtle changes in movement for activity to turn on.
- The team built switches responding to small molecules, peptides and proteins, and demonstrated electrochemical biosensors for steroid detection, with Alexandrov noting the work provides a powerful new strategy for designing useful biosensors.
- The collaboration spanned seven teams across Australia, the UK and the US, including the University of Washington lab of 2024 Nobel Prize laureate Professor David Baker and Australia's national science agency CSIRO.
Why it matters: By showing AI-designed receptors can act as effective molecular switches without the structural reshaping that natural proteins require, the study removes a major constraint that limited protein engineers to repurposing existing biological components. The involvement of 2024 Nobel laureate David Baker's lab signals the growing maturity of computational protein design and may accelerate development of low-cost, portable diagnostic and environmental sensing devices.
