Protein Tournament

About the Protein Tournament

The Align Foundation's Protein Engineering Tournament is a global benchmarking initiative that empowers researchers to evaluate and improve predictive and generative models in protein engineering. These datasets provide real-world protein engineering challenges spanning pharmaceuticals, food systems, biofuels, and environmental cleanup, designed to foster collaboration, transparency, and rapid progress in AI-powered protein design like CASP for protein structure prediction.

2023 Tournament

The pilot tournament launched on May 1st, 2023 with the theme of Enzyme Design, featuring six datasets from academic and industry partners. Over 30 teams participated from academia (55%), industry (30%), and independent labs (15%), with participants ranging from Nobel Laureates to high school students. In vitro validation was conducted by International Flavors and Fragrances (IFF). Read the full report here.

2025 Tournament

The 2025 tournament centered on PET Hydrolase Engineering, an industrially and environmentally significant challenge for enzymatic plastic recycling. Three independent assay platforms — cell-free PET film degradation with UV-vis readout, E. coli expression coupled to rapid-fire mass spectrometry, and a microfluidic droplet-based cell-free assay — were developed and benchmarked against a reference panel of 20 PETases to generate training and benchmarking data on activity and soluble expression. Of the three, only one platform produced consistently high-quality data suitable for model benchmarking, underscoring the importance of rigorous assay validation before scaling. Read the full report on Zenodo.