A protein is a chain of amino acids held together by what are called peptide bonds. On their own, those bonds are extremely stable; they're estimated to have a half-life of several hundred years. But in Earth's environment, most proteins don't last nearly that long. That's because organisms have evolved a handful of ways to catalyze the break-up of peptide bonds, which have diversified into countless specialized protein-digesting enzymes. Proteases are everywhere and generally make short work of any proteins that find their way into the environment.

Now, researchers have basically short-circuited the diversification process, using AI-based protein design tools to take the catalytic core of two types of protease and replace the entire rest of the protein. The resulting enzymes could be tuned to cut specific proteins in half, and the researchers demonstrated their effectiveness by using them to cut proteins associated with neurological diseases.

Cutting proteins

The basic peptide bond isn't especially interesting-looking—it's what you get when you link an amino group to an acid, releasing a water molecule in the process. As their name implies, amino acids have both an amino and an acid group, allowing them to form peptide bonds on two sides of the amino acid. This is critical for building up the long chains found in proteins. (The amino acids also have side chains with distinctive chemistry, which gives a backbone specific properties.)

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Prolific first-person shooter level designer Richard "Levelord" Gray died Monday at the age of 68, based on reports shared on social media by Apogee Entertainment yesterday. He had "dealt with cancer on and off for a while now," according to former colleague Joe Siegler.

After studying computer engineering in the '80s and tinkering on some early games in COBOL, Gray broke into the industry at the age of 35 in 1994 with the launch of GrayDoom, a set of four maps for the then-new Doom that were widely shared on CompuServe and beyond. The work attracted the attention of Q Studios' Nick Newhard, who contracted Gray to work on level design for the late '90s cult classic Blood.

Gray was subsequently hired by 3D Realms, where he said he was given free rein in designing "half the levels" for Duke Nukem 3D. There, he was also responsible for the famous, signed "You're Not Supposed to Be Here" easter egg, which players could find only by using cheats to explore outside of the usual confines of the map.

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Does it feel like people are perhaps a little grumpier or more on edge these days? It’s not like it’s without reason. There are wars. The climate is going haywire. Someone just died of plague. Scientific research is under attack. Machines keep stealing humans’ work. The media is a mess. And just when it all starts to feel a little overwhelming, Jaguar goes and unveils a new car.

The Type 01 is the first model to arrive from Jaguar’s rebirth. The British carmaker was an early entrant to the modern EV market with the 2017 I-Pace, which was fun to drive even if it was too small inside and perhaps completely unreliable. An all-electric sedan was supposed to be next, but a year from the showroom, it was abruptly canceled, leaving the automaker with nothing to sell as old models like the F-Pace ceased production.

Instead, Jaguar got to work on an all-new electric vehicle platform called JEA, which will underpin an all-electric product line. An elevated ownership experience and a starting price of about double the brand’s previous $60,000 entry point was the idea, Jaguar boss Rawdon Glover told me in 2024. Then last year the brand started teasing its relaunch, and everyone got upset. Things got even worse when the first images of the slab-sided and pastel-shaded Type 00 coupe concept leaked.

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AI-based tools seem to be causing security threats on a nearly daily basis, in part because we've been slow to recognize potential threats. One area where we seem to be ahead of the game, however, is in biosecurity.

As with most things biological, utility goes hand in hand with threats. We've developed increasingly sophisticated tools for designing proteins and seen some major successes, such as AI-designed enzymes that can digest plastics or block venom proteins. But these same tools could be used to make toxins or alter the behavior of viral proteins.

And the software we use to identify DNA sequences that encode potentially threatening proteins doesn't pick out AI-designed proteins, since nobody has characterized them well enough to know that they're threats. Nearly a year after that risk was flagged, it still wasn't clear what anyone could do about it.

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