Pasqal and True Nexus Encode Protein Gelation Structures on Neutral-Atom QPUs

Neutral-atom quantum hardware vendor Pasqal (Nasdaq: PSQL) and Saudi deep-tech startup True Nexus have announced a technical milestone in applying quantum computing to structural biology. Supported by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), the teams successfully encoded protein structures associated with molecular gelation—the phase transition that converts protein liquids into gels to establish food texture and structural binding—onto Pasqal’s neutral-atom quantum processors.

Bypassing Benchtop Trial-and-Error in Protein Engineering

While classical bioinformatic tools can sequence proteins and predict static 3D folds, simulating dynamic functional behaviors—such as gelling, foaming, and emulsification under real-world thermodynamic conditions—requires modeling complex, strongly correlated quantum-chemical interactions. The joint workflow combines True Nexus’s AI-driven protein platform with Pasqal’s analog neutral-atom quantum processors to make protein functionality computationally designable:

• Simulating Gelation Chemistry: Mapped the molecular mechanisms governing how proteins aggregate and form cross-linked gel networks, replacing empirical laboratory testing with predictive quantum simulations.
• Analog QPU Advantage: Leverages the native spatial reconfigurability and continuous-variable interactions of neutral-atom arrays to represent complex molecular configurations that are intractable for classical mean-field solvers.
• Target Applications: Enables the rational design of functional plant-based, halal, and novel proteins engineered to match the functional properties of traditional animal-derived gelatin, egg, and dairy proteins.