Frances Arnold

Nobel chemistry laureate Frances Arnold: ‘Whole swaths of science are just going to die on the vine’ The Caltech professor on using AI to harness the power of enzymes — and what US funding cuts could mean for research

Nobel laureate Frances Arnold has had an extraordinary journey from teenage rebellion in Pittsburgh to harnessing AI to evolutionary biology to create new kinds of chemistry.

I sat down with her for a Lunch with the FT in the bistro of Stockholm's Nobel Prize Museum.

www.ft.com/content/9923...

New work in Nature Communications! Using generative AI, we designed TrpB enzymes that are not only functional, but outperform natural ones and rival top lab-evolved TrpBs. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Huge thanks to @francesarnold.bsky.social, @anima-anandkumar.bsky.social, and all co-authors!

One of the quiet failures of our time is how rarely we humanize science. We celebrate breakthroughs, but often lose sight of the people behind them. When science feels abstract, it becomes easy to dismiss or distrust it. That's why New Heroes exists www.explorers.com @nationalacademies.org #SciArt

An exciting collaboration with @francesarnold.bsky.social on AI+enzymes. This combines generative protein models with carefully tuned filters that resulted in functional and versatile enzymes beating natural and previously engineered enzymes.

Generated PLP-dependent Trp synthases are functional, stable, and exhibit usefully broad substrate scopes! fun collaboration with @anima-anandkumar.bsky.social @ramanathanlab.bsky.social Amin Takavoli. I love AI + #enzymes!

Enzyme Engineering Database (EnzEngDB): a platform for sharing and interpreting sequence–function relationships across protein engineering campaigns

@francescazfl.bsky.social @jsunn-y.bsky.social @francesarnold.bsky.social @arianemora.bsky.social

Paper: doi.org/10.1093/nar/...
DB: enzengdb.org

Thank you, Gianluca. The pleasure was all mine. What a great meeting in a magical location.

Friday night at Adams pack station. 9 miles and a century from @caltech.

Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Lab and home of Mars rovers loses 10% of its staff The dismissal of 550 JPL workers is the fourth round of recent layoffs at the lab, prompting fears of a brain drain

A new round of layoffs at Nasa’s jet propulsion lab will result in ‘an untold loss of scientific knowledge and expertise’ according to congresswoman Judy Chu.

Looking for PhD or postdoctoral opportunities in #AI+biology #proteinengineering? the brilliant @arianemora.bsky.social has joined @aithyra.bsky.social in beautiful #vienna. I wish I could start over again!

Our new paper on AI-generated TrpBs with @anima-anandkumar.bsky.social. GenSLM generated very useful promiscuous TrpB #enzymes, bypassing a lot of #directedevolution! great work by the whole team, especially Theophile Lambert. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A compelling review of how ML/AI could help in the quest to find an enzyme for every reaction.

@jsunn-y.bsky.social @francescazfl.bsky.social Yueming Long @francesarnold.bsky.social

www.cell.com/cell-systems...

Private tour of the Louvre is a special treat. They were vacuuming the Sphinx. You may not have seen a Sphinx being brushed, so I am sharing.

On the beautiful @Caltech campus with two new professors @reisenbauerlab.bsky.social and @arianemora.bsky.social headed to start their careers in Vienna. Prospective graduate students take note! This is the future of #enzymes #proteinengineering. @caltechcce.bsky.social @caltech.edu

Loved seeing so many former #Arnoldgroup members at GRC #ProteinEngineering this week! Protein engineering is in good hands.

Enzymatic Stereodivergent Synthesis of Azaspiro[2.y]alkanes Azaspiro[2.y]alkanes are increasingly valuable scaffolds in pharmaceutical drug discovery; however, an asymmetric catalytic method for their synthesis remains unknown. Here, we present a stereodiverge...

I'm really proud of this work by Jae Kennemur and Yueming Long. #Enzymes rock, with some help from #directed evolution to do chemistry not known in nature (and really hard for humans, too). @caltechcce.bsky.social
pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/...

America’s Brain Drain Could Become the World’s Brain Gain Research-funding cuts and immigration changes threaten some of America’s economic advantages.

I saw it firsthand at the Lindau Nobel Laureates meeting--international young scientists welcomed and recruited in Germany and elsewhere.
www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

📅July 7-11
The 2025 Onassis Lectures in Biology and Chemistry will be held @forth-ite.bsky.social, Heraklion, Crete. This year’s Lectures are devoted to the advances, challenges, and future prospects of #Re-engineeringBiology through #DirectedEvolution and #Synthetic cellular pathways.

Research Position (PhD) in organic chemistry and b... <div style="text-align: justify;">The&nbsp; research&nbsp; group&nbsp; „Organic&nbsp; Chemistry&nbsp; and&nb...

Join us! We are looking for a new team member (PhD student) with strong background in organic chemistry.
🙏 RETWEET (We want to recruit internationally)

Organic chemistry meets #DirectedEvolution
Highly interdisciplinary & passionate research group

uni-bielefeld.hr4you.org/job/view/433...

Really enjoying #Repartzymes Repurposed and Artificial Enzymes meeting organized by #TomWard of Uni. Basel. Many former group members are here! rep.artzymes.info

I'm honored to be involved in the SDSS @stanforddoerr.bsky.social --we need it now more than ever. Let's continue to be bold about building the future.

Steered generation for protein optimization: On datasets with ~10^2 measurements, steering a discrete diffusion model outperforms RL on a protein language model for generating improved variants.

@jsunn-y.bsky.social @francesarnold.bsky.social @yisongyue.bsky.social

arxiv.org/abs/2505.15093

Took a walk in the woods this weekend. So good for the soul.

Such a pleasure to gather with current and former Arnold group members in San Diego! Thank you one and all. #ACSSpring2025

My @acs.org Priestley award address can be found here
fhalab.caltech.edu/wp-content/u...

I got to tell some stories I don't usually include in science talks. Thank you for coming. I will post the address on my website soon.

Thank you for visiting! We loved hearing about protein evolution--nature is very creative--you are helping us understand how novelty arises.

Before you meet @francesarnold.bsky.social at #ACSSpring2025, read my profile of her in @cenmag.bsky.social

cen.acs.org/people/award...

Meet @francesarnold.bsky.social, 2025 Priestley Medalist, at #ACSSpring2025.

Stop by the ACS Booth Theater in the Expo Hall to hear about her contributions to #chemistry and pick up a signed copy of her C&EN feature issue.

RSVP: connect.discoveracs.org/cen-priestle... #chemsky

Also remember that the National Archives maintains prior administrations' websites, e.g., bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov. I spent a lot of time unnecessarily downloading the Obama-era OSTP archive in 2017.