The Tournament
A protein engineering competition employing high-throughput automation and cloud lab experimentation.
THE PROTEIN ENGINEERING TOURNAMENT
A transparent platform for fostering collaboration, evaluating progress, and establishing benchmarks.
The Protein Engineering Tournament is a global benchmarking initiative hosted by The Align Foundation. This community-driven challenge empowers researchers to evaluate and improve predictive and generative models in protein engineering. Like CASP for protein structure prediction, the Tournament is designed to foster collaboration, transparency, and rapid progress in AI-powered protein design.
2025 Target
This year’s Tournament centers on polyethylene terephthalate hydrolase (PETase), an enzyme with real-world impact in microplastic degradation and the circular plastic economy.
TOURNAMENT STRUCTURE
The 2025 Tournament includes two consecutive phases:
Predictive Phase
Fall 2025*
Teams predict PETase properties, like activity, expression, and thermostability.
TWO TRACKS
ZERO-SHOT (no training data)
SUPERVISED (training data on natural sequences + mutants)
*Top teams advance to Generative phase
Generative Phase
Winter 2025–Spring 2026
Teams design novel PETase sequences with enhanced activity, while maintaining thermostability, and expression.
Designs are experimentally synthesized and tested.
Two iterative design rounds with feedback between the rounds
KEY DATES
Registration Opens (Summer)
Predictive Phase (Fall)
2025
Generative Phase (Winter 2025–Spring 2026)
Retrospective Report & Conference Presentation (Midyear)
2026
Stay tuned for specific dates and deadlines
EVALUATION CRITERIA
Predictive Phase: Strength of correlation of property predictions submitted by the teams to experimentally measured properties
Generative Phase: Fold improvement in experimentally measured activity of protein sequences designed by teams over the activity of an industry benchmark protein sequence (while maintaining threshold levels of thermostability, and expression)
INCENTIVES AND AWARDS
Recognition on the leaderboard and Tournament website
Opportunity to co-author in a special issue of a scientific journal
Present results at a major conference
Cash prizes
Free DNA synthesis, and experimental testing of team designed sequences
PLANNING COMMITTEE
To be announced—includes leaders from academia, industry, and Align.
SPONSORSHIP OPPORTUNITIES
Align is actively seeking sponsors to expand experimental data generation capacity, provide resources to teams to make the tournament more equitable, and provide better award incentives for the winning teams.
Sponsors will be acknowledged on:
The Protein Engineering Tournament 2025 website and communications
Conference presentations and retrospective publications
Leaderboards and social media
Frequently Asked Questions
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No. Participation in the Tournament is free of charge.
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Participating teams from academia, industry, non profits or independent/unaffiliated backgrounds are welcome. You may register solo or as a team with collaborators.
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Solo participants are welcome. We will share profiles of participants who wish to form a team to help facilitate organic team formation.
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Participation in the zero-shot track of the predictive phase is optional but highly encouraged.
Participation in the supervised track of the predictive phase is required to qualify for the generative phase of the Tournament.
Participation in the generative phase requires participation in both round-1 and round-2.
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Predictive Phase (Zero-Shot Track): We will provide protein sequences for which we seek prediction of properties like activity, thermostability, or expression
Predictive Phase (Supervised Track): We will provide protein sequences for which we seek prediction of properties like activity, thermostability, or expression. We will also provide a training dataset of activity, thermostability, and expression of natural PETase sequences and mutational variants.
Generative Phase (Round 1): We will provide a training dataset of activity, thermostability, and expression of natural PETase sequences and mutational variants.
Generative Phase (Round 2): In addition to the training dataset, we will also provide results of experimentally measured activity, thermostability, and expression data of the designed protein sequences submitted by each team.
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Teams retain full rights to novel protein sequences that they design), and the methods/processes used to generate the novel protein sequences, and methods/processes used to predict protein sequence properties. The participants should ensure they are not infringing on the IP of any third party in order to complete the tasks related to the Tournament. The Align Foundation will not be responsible for any third party claims of intellectual property rights infringement. The Align Foundation retains rights to all data generated from the Tournament. All submitted predictions, designed protein sequences, abstracts, code, and methods will be made publicly available at the end of the tournament.
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Yes—anonymized predictions, designed protein sequences, and the associated experimental results, abstracts, code, methods, and rankings on the leaderboard will be anonymously released at the end of each phase of the Tournament. The top performing teams will be de-anonymized after the completion of the Tournament.
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Yes. Teams will be anonymized during the Tournament. Top-performing teams will be de-anonymized at the end of the Tournament.
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Each team must submit their property predictions (predictive phase) or designed protein sequences (generative phase).
An abstract describing your modeling approach is required when submitting predictions (predictive phase) or designed protein sequences (generative phase).
Submission of detailed methods and deposition of code on Github is strongly encouraged to promote transparency and reproducibility.
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Only the top performers from the predictive round will be invited to participate in the generative phase.
Still have questions? Email us at tournament@alignbio.org.
Terms of Participation & Disclaimers
The Tournament is organized for advancing research purposes and public knowledge regarding the useful engineering of proteins. All teams must comply with applicable ethical research and data collection standards. The organizers shall not be responsible for any unethical practices concerning the development or applications of any novel protein sequences designed by the teams. Here is the link to participation terms and agreement.