Scientists have developed a molecular "syringe" that can inject proteins, including cancer drugs and gene
It is noteworthy that in the study, biologistsused an artificial intelligence (AI) program created by Google's DeepMind - AlphaFold. She previously predicted the structure of almost every protein known to science.
The team modified a syringe similar to a protein that is naturally present in Photorhabdus asymbiotica, a species of bacteria that primarily infects insects. The modified syringe has not yet been tested on people, only in laboratory dishes and on live mice. However, experts are confident that, over time, the syringe will find use in medicine.
“This approach can be customized to targetonto specific cells and used to deliver individual protein “cargos”. The redesigned injection complexes represent an exciting set of biotechnological tools that can find application in a variety of biological systems,” explain Charles Erickson and Martin Pilhofer, who study bacterial cell-cell interactions at ETH Zürich in Switzerland and were not involved in the study. The scientists wrote an accompanying commentary to the article.
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On the cover: proteins under a microscope that can be used as tiny syringes to inject specific "payloads" into human cells
Image courtesy of Joseph Kreitz, Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard, McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT