gLM2 designs a 2,500-AA polyketide synthase making a nylon precursor, 10x titer boost

anshulkundaje · x · 2026-09-21

• A UC Berkeley / Keasling Lab collaboration posted a bioRxiv preprint using the genomic language model gLM2 to generatively design a new-to-nature biosynthetic assembly line.
• The result is an 8-domain, 2,500-AA polyketide synthase (PKS) that produces δ-valerolactam, a nylon precursor not naturally synthesized by PKSs.
• The gLM2-designed variant achieved a 10x increase in product titer over the starting rational design.
• A representative AI-for-Science result: not predicting natural proteins, but designing an entire non-natural biosynthetic pathway with a generative model.

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