New AI-based program is a shrink ray for proteins
-->
Advertisement
Starting July 24, 2026, C&EN Global Enterprise subscribers now have access to all of cen.acs.org. View past issues here.
Close
Close
Log in or create an account
Access thousands of C&EN articles
Get personalized recommendations
Follow your preferred chemistry topics
Save your favorite articles
Log In
Don't have an account?<br>Create one
Or
Access Through Institution
New AI-based program is a shrink ray for proteins
Share
Save
News
Protein Folding
New AI-based program is a shrink ray for proteins
Raygun platform miniaturizes—and expands—existing proteins
by
Sarah Braner
July 30, 2026
min read
Share
Save
Save
An illustration comparing a hemoglobin protein that has been shrunk, predicted with AlphaFold, next to the reference protein.
A shrunk version of hemoglobin, left, compared to the reference hemoglobin.
Credit: Rohit Singh
News
The latest chemistry news, including important research advances, business and policy trends, chemical safety practices, career guidance, and more.
Read More
A new AI-based program, dubbed Raygun, can suggest strategic cuts to a protein’s amino acid sequence to shrink the overall structure without affecting the protein’s function (Nature 2026, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10842-8). The tool shrank fluorescent proteins EGFP and mCherry by 10–15%, and the resulting proteins still glowed under excitation.
“This is an approach that essentially reasons from evolutionary patterns in protein sequences to figure out what the critical pieces are,” says Rohit Singh, a computational biologist at Duke University who led the work in collaboration with his colleague Scott Soderling. “You can ask for much more extensive substitutions than you would typically have by point-by-point mutations.”
Shrinking proteins could potentially make them easier to use. For example, miniaturizing fluorescent proteins that act as tags to image biological processes and tissues could make them less obtrusive and less likely to interfere with the thing they’re tagging, Singh says. Or shrinking sequences could help address one of the main issues with gene therapy: the limited capacities of delivery vehicles like adeno-associated viruses, he adds.
While the Raygun approach may be compared with designing proteins from scratch, Singh says these techniques aren’t necessarily competitors and could even be used in tandem.
Advertisement
“De novo design is about creating something in an entirely new part of the protein space. Raygun is about exploring the space around it more effectively,” he says. “So you could actually make a de novo design and then still apply Raygun on top of it to then explore the space around that specific novel design.”
The tool has another interesting possibility—the ability to expand proteins as well as shrink them. While this may seem counterintuitive, expanding a protein’s size could be helpful if researchers want to add a new domain to an existing protein. Singh says they are still developing this utility for the algorithm.
Sarah Braner covers the life sciences from New York City.
Send the reporter feedback
Submit a Letter to the Editor for publication
https://doi.org/10.47287/cen.556450.newsarticle
Chemical & Engineering News
ISSN 0009-2347
Copyright ©<br>2026 American Chemical Society
Enjoyed the article?
Share
New AI-based program is a shrink ray for proteins
Raygun platform miniaturizes—and expands—existing proteins
cen.acs.org
ADVERTISEMENT
More in
Protein Folding
Editor's Picks
Popular
Return to top
2/3
FREE ARTICLES LEFT THIS MONTH
Chemistry matters. Join us to get the news you need.
Get More<br>Get More
Close
C&EN's Elements Newsletter
Stay on top of the chemistry world with your editor-curated roundup of C&EN stories
Email Address
Subscribe
Privacy Policy
Chemistry News That Matters
C&EN empowers those in and around the global chemical enterprise
Upgrade
Subscribe to C&EN
Debug leftColumns:
leftColumns exists: no
Share This Article
Close
Copy Link
Bluesky
Share "" via email
Close
Send Email to*
To send an email to multiple recipients, separate email addresses with a comma,<br>semicolon, or both.
Your Name*
Your Email Address*
Add a Note
Optional personal message to include with the shared article.
Send Email
Sending...
Chemical & Engineering News will not share your email address with any other person or company.
Email Sent Successfully
Close
Your email has been sent to
Article: