LANTERN (IMAGE)

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

LANTERN

Caption

How do you figure out how to alter a gene so that it makes a usefully different protein? The job might be imagined as interacting with a complex machine (at left) that sports a vast control panel filled with thousands of unlabeled switches, which all affect the device’s output somehow. A new tool called LANTERN figures out which sets of switches — rungs on the gene’s DNA ladder — have the largest effect on a given attribute of the protein. It also summarizes how the user can tweak that attribute to achieve a desired effect, essentially transmuting the many switches on our machine’s panel into another machine (at right) with just a few simple dials.

Credit

B. Hayes / NIST

Usage Restrictions

No restrictions.

License

Public Domain

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.