AI-Designed NovoTags Expand Multicolor Live-Cell Imaging
Researchers at HHMI’s AI@HHMI, led by David Baker and Luke Lavis, are using RFdiffusion-based AI to design NovoTags—small protein binders that pair with Janelia Fluor dyes—to create a new class of fluorescent probes. This approach could let scientists label many colors and proteins simultaneously, without traditional chemical linkers, enabling longer, multi-color imaging and accelerating discovery. The team plans to rollout NovoTags for about a dozen dye colors and expand to dyes that blink or respond to physiological signals, with the tools becoming broadly available to the scientific community.