RareFold: Structure prediction and design of proteins with noncanonical amino acids

Abstract

Protein structure prediction and design have traditionally been confined to the 20 canonical amino acids. Expanding this chemical space to include non-canonical amino acids (ncAAs) is essential for engineering proteins with novel chemical and functional properties. However, existing methods are not designed to generalise across chemically diverse residue types. Here, we present RareFold, a deep learning architecture for structure prediction and design of proteins containing the 20 canonical amino acids and 29 ncAAs. By representing each residue as an independent token, RareFold learns context-dependent atomic interaction patterns across chemically diverse sequence spaces, enabling modelling of non-standard chemistries within a unified framework. We apply this capability in EvoBindRare, a generative framework for de novo design of linear and cyclic peptide binders with an efficient implementation that substantially reduces computational requirements compared to existing architectures. We demonstrate its performance by designing binders against Ribonuclease A, yielding novel linear and cyclic peptides incorporating ncAAs within predicted interfaces with low-micromolar affinities (KD [~]2-9 M), comparable to the native ligand (KD [~]2 M). Hydrogen-deuterium exchange mass spectrometry confirms that the designed peptides engage the target at regions consistent with predicted binding interfaces. In addition, immunogenicity profiling in human-derived organoid models shows no detectable immune activation. By extending deep learning-based protein design to non-canonical chemical spaces, RareFold enables programmable access to expanded amino acid alphabets and broadens the scope of de novo protein engineering.