Curie Brief
Turn on cookies to sign in
Signing in saves your progress to your Curie account. We can only do that with cookies on — turn them on to continue.
News
Scientists at Harvard have unveiled AGENTEX, a groundbreaking platform that can engineer proteins using up to 34 amino acids — nearly double nature's 20 — without touching a living cell's DNA. The tool works entirely in test tubes, making it faster and safer than previous genome-editing approaches. It could unlock new frontiers in drug development, materials science, and beyond.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute have developed AGENTEX (Automated Genetic tRNA EXpansion), a platform that lets scientists design and produce entirely custom proteins — without reprogramming a living organism's genome. Published in Nature, the tool works inside cell-component "soups" (lysate solutions), bypassing the safety concerns and slow timelines of traditional genetic engineering.
The big deal? Nature builds all proteins from just 20 amino acids. AGENTEX makes 34 codons customizable, enabling proteins built from up to 34 different amino acids — a massive leap from the painstaking one-at-a-time codon reprogramming of the past two decades. Along the way, the team made a surprising fundamental discovery: transfer RNAs (tRNAs) — the molecules that assemble proteins — are far more flexible than previously thought, opening the door to engineering entirely parallel protein-synthesis systems.
By the Numbers:
Why it matters: AGENTEX transforms protein engineering into a high-throughput molecular design platform, enabling thousands of novel molecules to be built and tested in parallel. Its companion tool, tSCAN, may also shed light on tRNA mutations linked to diseases like diabetes and hearing loss — with real potential to accelerate the development of new therapeutics.
