{"id":235115,"date":"2026-04-13T23:35:51","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T04:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/designing-better-membrane-proteins-by-embracing-imperfection"},"modified":"2026-04-13T23:35:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T04:35:51","slug":"designing-better-membrane-proteins-by-embracing-imperfection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/designing-better-membrane-proteins-by-embracing-imperfection","title":{"rendered":"Designing better membrane proteins by embracing imperfection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/designing-better-membrane-proteins-by-embracing-imperfection2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scientists at the VIB\u2013VUB Center for Structural Biology have uncovered a counterintuitive principle that could reshape how membrane proteins are designed from scratch: Sometimes, making a protein less stable helps it fold correctly. In their study <a href=\"https:\/\/pnas.org\/doi\/10.1073\/pnas.2528772123\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the <i>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<\/i>, the researchers demonstrate that introducing carefully placed \u201cimperfections,\u201d a strategy known as negative design, enables synthetic membrane proteins to fold and assemble efficiently in artificial membranes.<\/p>\n<p>Membrane proteins are essential for life and biotechnology, acting as gateways, sensors, and drug targets. Yet designing them from scratch remains notoriously difficult. Unlike soluble proteins, they must navigate a complex folding process while inserting into lipid membranes and during this step, many designs fail.<\/p>\n<p>Traditional protein design focuses on maximizing the stability of the final folded structure. But the new study shows that, for transmembrane \u03b2-barrel proteins, this approach can backfire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists at the VIB\u2013VUB Center for Structural Biology have uncovered a counterintuitive principle that could reshape how membrane proteins are designed from scratch: Sometimes, making a protein less stable helps it fold correctly. In their study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers demonstrate that introducing carefully placed \u201cimperfections,\u201d a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1694],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-electronics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}