Generative AI comes to gene editing

The protein design company Profluent Bio has used generative artificial intelligence (AI) to dream up new gene editors (bioRxiv 2024, DOI: 10.1101/2024.04.22.590591v1). In a recent preprint (published before peer review), the company’s researchers describe how they trained their protein-designing large language model ProGen2 on 238,917 Cas9 gene-editing proteins that they collected for a database called the CRISPR-Cas Atlas. The generative AI created new-to-nature proteins that can edit human cells. The team then used a different AI system to generate the guide RNA needed to get the new editor to the right place to snip. While the software used to design the editor system is proprietary, Profluent is releasing the AI-generated gene editor, which it has dubbed OpenCRISPR-1, to interested researchers.