An artificial intelligence (AI) has predicted the 3D shape of nearly every protein known to science – just one year after its first data release. DeepMind, a company owned by Google, announced that it had predicted the three-dimensional structures of more than 200 million proteins using AlphaFold.
Key highlights
- AlphaFold is an AI-based protein structure prediction tool.
- It used processes based on “training, learning, retraining and relearning” to predict the structures of the entire 214 million unique protein sequences deposited in the Universal Protein Resource (UniProt) database.
- The accomplishment paves the way for untold avenues of scientific exploration into proteins, the building blocks of life. And researchers are giddy with excitement.
- In collaboration with scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL–EBI), DeepMind unveiled its first batch of AlphaFold predictions in July 2021.
- As per scientists, it would transform biological research and accelerate drug discovery, AlphaFold predicts the 3D shape of proteins based on their amino acid sequences.
- By understanding the shape which any given protein folds into, scientists can get a grip on how that protein operates, deciphering what its main role is inside cells.
- Proteins are the business ends of biology, meaning proteins carry out all the functions inside a living cell. Therefore, knowing protein structure and function is essential to understanding human diseases.
- Scientists predict protein structures using x-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, or cryogenic electron microscopy. These techniques are not just time-consuming, they often take years and are based mainly on trial-and-error methods. The development of AlphaFold changes all of that.
- AlphaFold has already helped hundreds of scientists accelerate their discoveries in vaccine and drug development since the first public release of the database nearly a year back.
