Degron tags can set off fast and temporally managed degradation of proteins utilizing small molecules often called molecular glues. These molecular glues induce or stabilize protein interactions between a goal protein and a ubiquitin ligase. As analysis instruments, molecular glue complexes are restricted by the big measurement of degron tags, which prevents integration in endogenous protein-coding genes. In a research printed in Science, Mercer et al. apply a steady evolution method to generate molecular glue complexes with excessive affinities and smaller measurement, acquiring a compact degron that triggers protein degradation with no detectable off-target results.
Latest work developed an optimized molecular glue, PT-179, that binds cereblon to set off protein degradation. In contrast to its predecessors, PT-179 doesn’t degrade off-target proteins, making it a great beginning block to design molecular glue complexes with improved properties.