ARIA funds protein-based manufacturing projects

The Advanced Research + Invention Agency is funding 11 research projects with £50 m through its Universal Fabricators program, which aims to use proteins to manufacture advanced inorganic and composite materials at scale. The program seeks to overcome the trade-off between cost, precision and volume by using designed or naturally abundant proteins to guide minerals and other ingredients into structured materials at room temperature.

The effort builds on AI-enabled protein design advances such as AlphaFold and focuses on the “Protein Assembly Problem”: directing proteins and surrounding minerals to self-organize into useful materials. Research teams across the UK, as well as Seattle and Berkeley, will target hollow-core optical fibers, defect-free mineral-hardened membranes and high-performance magnets that avoid rare-earth elements.

Selected projects include CoreShell Fibre Factory, which will use computational modelling and machine learning to design reusable protein moulds for hollow-core optical fibers; S-LATTICE at the University of Edinburgh, which is developing porous metal-protein sheets for selective filtration; and PROTEUS at the University of Sheffield, which is using proteins from wool, silk, eggs and milk to grow crystals for low-temperature ceramic magnet production.