Catalophore-Guided Protein Variant Design for Herbicide Tolerance and Detoxification

Overview

Innophore offers a computational protein variant design and analysis workflow to support development of herbicide-tolerant or detoxifying enzymes. The service combines Catalophore cavity analysis, structural assessment, and sequence-based filtering to narrow large sequence spaces into focused, diverse libraries that balance predicted function, developability, and diversity. The result is a prioritized set of variants with construct specifications and an analysis framework linking each variant to experimental outcomes.

This offering is designed for organizations seeking to improve herbicide response, native activity, or protein stability in plant-relevant systems. Because computational methods alone cannot establish expression, folding, or herbicide tolerance, the workflow relies on a design-build-test-learn loop: the customer or an approved partner performs construct generation, parallel expression, and activity testing, while Innophore interprets the resulting data to refine designs and prioritize candidates for further validation.

Technical specifications

Key features:

• Catalophore-based cavity analysis describes protein binding sites by geometry and physicochemical properties, enabling direct comparison of candidate variants.
• Structural assessment and sequence-based filtering prioritize mutations likely to preserve native function and improve developability.
• Deliverables include ranked sequences, construct specifications, and a variant-to-result analysis framework.
• Iterative learning integrates expression, solubility, stability, and activity data to refine subsequent library designs.
• Validation can extend to plant-relevant systems and benchmark against the customer’s current workflow.

Workflow phases:

• Scope: agree target protein or detoxification mechanism, herbicide, expression route, assays, and success criteria.
• Design: apply computational analysis to propose a focused library and deliver ranked sequences.
• Build and Test: partner or customer constructs and evaluates variants, including herbicide conversion for detoxification candidates.
• Learn and Validate: integrate results, identify failure modes, confirm hits in a plant-relevant system, and support scale-up decisions.

Technology readiness level

The Catalophore platform is established and has been used in enzyme and drug discovery collaborations. This specific variant design workflow for herbicide targets is at an early application stage, with feasibility to be assessed through agreed experimental readouts and success criteria. The proposed validation plan includes benchmarking current workflows, running a design-build-test-learn cycle, and confirming selected hits in plant-relevant systems before scale-up.