Congratulations to Tanja Kortemme on her NIH Award on biological error correction

We’re excited to share that Tanja Kortemme has received a major NIH award for her project “De novo design and engineering of biological error correction.”

Biology achieves extreme fidelity in processes critical for life—such as DNA replication and protein translation—using non-equilibrium kinetic proofreading, which amplifies correct over incorrect molecular outcomes by orders of magnitude. This project asks an ambitious question: 

Can we build error-correction systems from the ground up and integrate them into engineered biology to boost molecular specificity by 2–4 orders of magnitude?

Leveraging recent advances in deep-learning-guided de novo protein design, Tanja’s lab will engineer tunable, composable proteins and energy-driven multi-step pathways that couple recognition, modification, conformational change, kinetically controlled assembly, event cascades, and energy consumption.

The team will construct multiple designed variants with controlled rates and affinities, then test full multi-protein systems using in vitro reconstitution, high-throughput quantitative assays, and modular cell engineering, integrating systematic perturbations with predictive modeling.

This work lays a foundation for future advances in diagnostics, tissue engineering, cell therapies, and biotechnology where amplified specificity could be transformative. 

Please join us in congratulating Tanja and the Kortemme lab on this achievement.