A new artificial intelligence tool can predict the functions of enzymes based on their amino acid sequences, even when the enzymes are unstudied or poorly understood.
The researchers said the AI tool, called CLEAN, outperforms the leading state-of-the-art tools in accuracy, reliability and sensitivity.
Better understanding of enzymes and their functions can benefit research in genomics, chemistry, medicine and pharmaceuticals, among other areas.
“Just like ChatGPT uses data from written language to create predictive text, we are leveraging the language of proteins to predict their activity,” said Huimin Zhao, a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Zhao’s group is making CLEAN accessible online for other researchers seeking to characterise an enzyme or determine whether an enzyme could catalyse a desired reaction.
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