With AI, extreme microbe reveals how life’s building blocks adapt to high pressure

High-pressure limited proteolysis (Hi-P LiP) deeply interrogates protein structure under pressure. Credit: PRX Life (2024). DOI: 10.1103/PRXLife.2.033011

An assist from a Google Artificial Intelligence tool has helped scientists discover how the proteins of a heat-loving microbe respond to the crushing conditions of the planet’s deepest ocean trenches, offering new insights into how these building blocks of life might have evolved under early Earth conditions.

The findings, published in PRX Life, will likely prompt further studies into the inner workings of proteins and life on other planets, and serve as a successful case study on how artificial intelligence was able to accelerate such research by decades.

“This work gives us a better idea of how you might design a new protein to withstand stress and new clues into what types of proteins would be more likely to exist in high-pressure environments like those at the bottom of the ocean or on a different planet,” said Stephen Fried, a Johns Hopkins University chemist who co-led the research.

Fried’s team subjected Thermus thermophilus—a microorganism widely used in scientific experiments owing to its ability to withstand heat—to lab-simulated pressures mimicking those of the Mariana Trench. The tests revealed some of its proteins resist those stress levels because they have a built-in flexibility with extra space between their atomic structures, a design that allows them to compress without collapsing.

 

 

 

By Johns Hopkins University

Article can be accessed on: phys.org