{
  "id": 16195610,
  "title": "When computer science meets the alpaca immune system",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/23/when-computer-science-meets-the-alpaca-immune-system",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-10-23T14:40:05.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Phys.org",
    "slug": "phys-org",
    "url": "https://phys.org/news/2026-10-science-alpaca-immune.html"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Will White, a postdoctoral scholar in Tufts' Department of Computer Science, has been working on a project combining computer science and alpaca biology. Unlike other researchers, Shoemaker and his team took a novel approach to discover new nanobodies, using computational tools to analyze alpaca nanobodies. Alpacas produce unique nanobodies, which are smaller and easier to work with than standard antibodies. The process involves injecting alpacas with protein antigens from pathogens, collecting blood samples, and extracting nanobody DNA. This DNA is then reformatted and tested for binding ability to antigen targets. NanoMAP, the custom computational tool developed by White and his team, groups nanobodies with similar sequence similarities into \"clonal families.\" This helps researchers identify the most promising nanobodies for further development as diagnostics or treatments, providing a more comprehensive screening than random sampling.",
  "summary": "After earning bachelor's and Ph.D. degrees in bioengineering with a focus on molecular biology, Will White, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Computer Science at Tufts, was pretty certain his future research would involve things like DNA and proteins. What he didn't know was that alpacas would also be part of the equation.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}