Design of Reprogrammed and New Molecular and Cellular Functions

There has been exciting progress in the computational design of proteins with new structures and functions, highlighting the potential to advance many applications in biological engineering, as well as to provide insights into the design principles of function. Many significant challenges remain, both in the accuracy of current computational approaches, and in the complexity of functions that can be designed at present. I will discuss our recent progress with computational methods and describe new approaches and their application to engineer sensor/actuators that detect and respond to small molecules in living cells, and to reprogram the function of biological machines.