full transcript

From the Ted Talk by David Baker: 5 challenges we could solve by designing new proteins

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Our advances in understanding protein fiodlng and how to design proteins, coupled with the decreasing cost of gene syithsnes and the Moore's law increase in computing power, now enable us to design tens of thousands of new proteins, with new shapes and new functions, on the compeutr, and encode each one of those in a sytniehtc gene. Once we have those synthetic genes, we put them into bacteria to program them to make these brand-new proteins. We then extract the pienorts and determine whether they function as we designed them to and whether they're safe.

Open Cloze

Our advances in understanding protein _______ and how to design proteins, coupled with the decreasing cost of gene _________ and the Moore's law increase in computing power, now enable us to design tens of thousands of new proteins, with new shapes and new functions, on the ________, and encode each one of those in a _________ gene. Once we have those synthetic genes, we put them into bacteria to program them to make these brand-new proteins. We then extract the ________ and determine whether they function as we designed them to and whether they're safe.

Solution

  1. folding
  2. proteins
  3. synthesis
  4. computer
  5. synthetic

Original Text

Our advances in understanding protein folding and how to design proteins, coupled with the decreasing cost of gene synthesis and the Moore's law increase in computing power, now enable us to design tens of thousands of new proteins, with new shapes and new functions, on the computer, and encode each one of those in a synthetic gene. Once we have those synthetic genes, we put them into bacteria to program them to make these brand-new proteins. We then extract the proteins and determine whether they function as we designed them to and whether they're safe.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
protein design 7
amino acid 6
amino acids 5
immune system 3
acid sequences 3
protein folding 3
synthetic gene 3
total number 3
remarkable biological 2
acid sequence 2
stone age 2
computational protein 2
challenges today 2
designed protein 2
vaccine candidates 2
design revolution 2
bell laboratories 2
immune cells 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
amino acid sequences 3
amino acid sequence 2
protein design revolution 2

Important Words

  1. advances
  2. bacteria
  3. computer
  4. computing
  5. cost
  6. coupled
  7. decreasing
  8. design
  9. designed
  10. determine
  11. enable
  12. encode
  13. extract
  14. folding
  15. function
  16. functions
  17. gene
  18. genes
  19. increase
  20. law
  21. power
  22. program
  23. protein
  24. proteins
  25. put
  26. safe
  27. shapes
  28. synthesis
  29. synthetic
  30. tens
  31. thousands
  32. understanding