This is perhaps the most exciting new development in science this year. With Deep Learning at its core. It is even bigger than AlphaGo!
A protein is made from a ribbon of amino acids that folds itself up with many complex twists and turns and tangles. This structure determines the function of the protein – what it does. And figuring out what proteins do is key to understanding the basic mechanisms of life, when it works and when it doesn’t.
DeepMind’s protein-folding AI has solved a 50-year-old grand challenge of biology. AlphaFold can predict the shape of proteins to within the width of an atom. The breakthrough will help scientists design drugs and understand disease.
AlphaFold predicted the structure of dozens of proteins with a margin of error of just 1.6 angstroms—that’s 0.16 nanometers or atom-sized. This far outstrips all other computational methods and for the first time matches the accuracy of experimental techniques to map out the structure of proteins in the lab, such as cryo-electron microscopy, nuclear magnetic resonance, and x-ray crystallography.
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“A protein’s shape is closely linked with its function, and the ability to predict this structure unlocks a greater understanding of what it does and how it works. Many of the world’s greatest challenges, like developing treatments for diseases or finding enzymes that break down industrial waste, are fundamentally tied to proteins and the role they play.”
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