Self-driving laboratories to autonomously navigate the protein fitness landscape

Protein engineering has nearly limitless applications across chemistry, energy and medicine, but creating new proteins with improved or novel functions remains slow, labor-intensive and inefficient. Here we present the Self-driving Autonomous Machines for Protein Landscape Exploration (SAMPLE) platform for fully autonomous protein engineering. SAMPLE is driven by an intelligent agent that learns protein sequence-function relationships, designs new proteins and sends designs to a fully automated robotic system that experimentally tests the designed proteins and provides feedback to improve the agent's understanding of the system. We deploy four SAMPLE agents with the goal of engineering glycoside hydrolase…

• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy

  Award: DE-SC0018409
• NI
  National Institutes of Health

  Awards: T32GM135066, T32GM008349, 5R35GM119854
• GL
  Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center
• NI
  National Institute of General Medical Sciences

  Awards: 5R35GM119854, T32GM135066, T32GM008349