A major collaborative effort with the Gormley Lab at Rutgers  on designing thermostabilized enzymes has culminated with a publication in Advanced Materials. The work combines robotics executing automated synthesis and characterization with active machine learning and optimization to design copolymer chemistry to promote the retention of enzyme activity in the face of adverse conditions. The essential premise is that interactions between a polymer and protein yield a more robust complex, termed a protein-polymer hybrid, that can perform useful function in a non-native environment or become robust against environmental stresses. In recognition of the diverse but substantive efforts within the collaboration, the paper unusually recognizes four co-first authors with equal contributions (Roshan Patel and Carlos Borca from the Webb group and Matt Tamasi, Shashank Kosuri from the Gormley lab). The team demonstrated a (mostly) "closed-loop" discovery approach that was provably successful for three distinct enzymes that were stressed by high-temperature exposure. Key findings from the study include (i)  stabilizing effects were indeed provided by copolymers tailored for a given enzyme (i.e., a copolymer designed for one enzyme was not effective at stabilizing a different enzyme) and (ii) activity retention is likely induced by chaperone-like behavior versus solely surface-specific interactions.

See the article here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adma.202201809