Stanford develops MIDAS protein engineering

Researchers at Stanford University, led by Professor Michael Z. Lin and graduate students Yan Wu and Pengli Wang, have developed a groundbreaking technique called MIDAS (Microbe-Independent Deep Assembly and Screening). This method condenses the time-intensive protein building and testing process from many days to just 24 hours. By utilizing polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to assemble linear DNA segments, MIDAS bypasses the traditional microbial cloning and plasmid transfer steps, allowing direct transfer of gene variations into mammalian cells for functional analysis. This innovation is approximately 50 times faster and a tenth of the cost of existing methods, with a practical test of 384 variants costing about $2,000 and taking four hours of hands-on work. MIDAS is expected to accelerate enzyme and biosensor studies, improve automated production of PCR primers, and generate larger sequence-fitness datasets for AI training, driving advances in AI-inspired molecular biology. The study was published in the journal Molecular Systems Biology and received funding from the United States — National Institutes of Health.