Researchers at the University of Washington published a Nature Chemical Biology proof‑of‑principle for 'logic‑programmed' proteins that autonomously present therapeutic cargo only when defined biological conditions are met. The constructs use self‑folding 'smart tails' to implement AND/OR/YES gates responding to cues like pH and protease activity. The team reports a recombinant expression workflow that accelerates scalable production versus synthetic assembly. Independent coverage summarizes this and related work showing programmable proteins can restrict action to disease microenvironments, improving targeting precision and manufacturability.