New proteins enable scientists to control cell activities

© Sailan Shui 2021 EPFL - Scientists have developed new controlled proteins and used to switch cellular activities on and off like a light bulb. Sailan Shui, a doctoral assistant at EPFL's Laboratory of Protein Design and Immunoengineering, enjoys playing with proteins, activating and deactivating them as she wishes, as if light switches that can be turned on and off. However, instead of using electronic, her method relies on proteins to trigger the process. Shui's research has just been published . To develop her method, Shui and her colleagues began by computationally modeling proteins that don't exist naturally. She then assembled proteins into OFF- and ON-switches. "The first step was joining the two synthetic proteins together and making sure they can work in tandem.