Lucas E. Brennan-Almaraz

Aditi T. Merchant*, Daniel Guo*, Ben Viggiano*, Lucas Brennan-Almaraz, Evelyn Hur, Tina Mai, Peter Yin, Samuel H. King, Euan A. Ashley, Brian L. Hie

Proto is a high-level programming language for generative biology that composes a small set of abstract primitives into structured programs, encoding generative design campaigns across DNA, RNA, proteins, ligands, and their interactions. It folds predictive models into generative workflows — used here to design alternatively spliced introns validated in human cell lines — and is natively multi-objective, reaching leading experimental success rates for synthetic protein–DNA design. Paired with AI agents, it lets users specify complex pathways and regulatory logic through natural-language instructions.