Figure 8.

Major aspects of the de novo protein design. The design of a functional de novo protein, for example, a binder (middle, magenta) to a target protein (middle, gray), requires sampling of the backbone structure space to find a backbone compatible with the function, sequence optimization to stabilize the backbone, and designing the functional site interactions. A scoring function is necessary to select designs with desired properties, typically by identifying low-energy sequence-structure combinations. Reprinted with permission from ref (157). Copyright 2021 Elsevier.