江南大学邓禹教授团队：基于人工智能的大肠杆菌核心启动子设计与强度调控方面的研究成果

Core Insights - The article discusses significant advancements made by Professor Deng Yu's research team at Jiangnan University in the design and strength regulation of Escherichia coli core promoters, published in Nucleic Acids Research [1][5] - The research addresses the challenges in accurately predicting and rationally designing bacterial core promoters, which are crucial for transcription initiation [1][2] Research Progress - The team developed a comprehensive platform that integrates rational library construction, predictive modeling, and generative design to achieve programmable regulation of E. coli core promoters [2][3] - They introduced the Mutation-Barcoding-Reverse Sequencing (MBRS) strategy, creating a high-quality dataset of 112,955 promoters, covering a 16,226-fold expression range [2][3] Model Performance - A Transformer model trained on this dataset achieved high prediction accuracy with a correlation coefficient of R = 0.87, revealing attention patterns consistent with classical motifs and contextual dependencies [3] - The platform can generate novel promoters with precise target strengths, achieving a correlation coefficient of R = 0.95, and demonstrated good generalization across different genetic backgrounds (R = 0.93) [3] Application and Impact - The designed promoters exhibited stable modular "plug-and-play" regulatory effects in both constitutive and inducible systems, contributing to the optimization of microbial cell factories [3][6] - The research has been supported by various funding sources, including the National Key Research and Development Program and the National Natural Science Foundation [5]