Unlocking
Protein Dynamics
Protein Dynamics
Proteins are always moving. They wiggle. They jiggle. They interact with their surroundings. This movement drives their function.
Yet this motion mostly remains invisible. We cannot understand protein function, engineer it, or correct it until we can see the motion — and predict it.
This gap is limiting.
Most of our structural data, and the insights drawn from them, rest on static structures that hide this motion. Static structural biology has delivered extraordinary breakthroughs, including AlphaFold. But AlphaFold predicts form, not function.
We are building the methods stack to uncover this motion, more directly connecting structure and motion to function. These methods will enable us to answer new biological questions.
- 01Why can we predict a protein's fold but not whether a mutation will break it?
- 02Why can we design a binder, but not an enzyme?
- 03Why is drug specificity harder than affinity?
Answering these questions requires data on how proteins move. The entire structure pipeline must be rebuilt. That work requires a new scientific organization built to address the whole stack.
Prism is making protein motion measurable, predictable, and actionable.
Prism is rebuilding the foundation of structural biology to transform how we discover drugs, engineer biology, and understand disease.
Having protein dynamics at our fingertips changes what we can ask of biology. We can learn what life’s essential molecules do, not just what they look like.
Predict
Disease-causing mutations often change how a protein moves, not just its shape. Prism’s work will help reveal how a mutation shifts binding, stability, or activity, uncovering the way function and disease actually works.Design
A protein moves between distinct functional states. Seeing them lets drug designers target the specific states, including transient pockets that never appear in a static model.Engineer
Enzyme function depends on motion. By measuring and modeling those dynamics, Prism makes it possible to design enzymes with new or tuned activity for synthetic biology.
Prism is opening the era of predictable, controllable protein function.
Engineering
Engineer motion for biosensors, allosteric switches, enzymes, molecular logic, and responsive materials. Dynamics becomes something to design, not to observe.Therapeutics
Design against specific functional states rather than a single structure. Improve selectivity between closely related targets. Control function through allostery.Disease Variants
Predict how a mutation changes a protein's behavior rather than only its shape. Connect structural data to disease, where dysfunction often reflects a shift in dynamics.Ecosystem
Continuous innovation that will raise questions we haven't yet learned to ask. By bridging technology and biological questions, we can ask ambitious questions and co-develop the needed methods.