Overcoming Limitation of AlphaFold2 by Deep-mutational Scanning and Stability-Selection of Protein Sequences

This repository contains the processed datasets and corresponding code used in our study. While AlphaFold2 revolutionizes protein structure prediction, its accuracy critically depends on evolutionary information from natural homologs—limiting applications for proteins with sparse sequence families. Here, we bypass this bottleneck by employing deep mutational scanning and stability-guided selection to generate artificial homologs. Fed into AlphaFold2, these synthetic sequences match the accuracy achieved on well-predicted proteins with rich natural homology, while providing highly accurate predictions for difficult targets—including orphan proteins previously deemed "unpredictable." Our approach achieves high accuracy (<3 Å RMSD for 5/8 and <2 Å RMSD for 7/8 targets after excluding intrinsically flexible regions). Thus, integrating simple, scalable molecular biology (mutagenesis/selection) with high-throughput sequencing can deliver the accuracy similar to but at a fraction of the cost and time of traditional experimental structure-determination methods. This hybrid framework could democratize high-resolution structural biology, opening avenues to determine structures of protein complexes, modified proteins, and condition-dependent conformations.