Google’s deep-learning program for determining the 3D shapes of proteins stands to transform biology, say scientists.

An artificial intelligence (AI) network developed by Google AI offshoot DeepMind has made a gargantuan leap in solving one of biology’s grandest challenges — determining a protein’s 3D shape from its amino-acid sequence.

DeepMind’s program, called AlphaFold, outperformed around 100 other teams in a biennial protein-structure prediction challenge called CASP, short for Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction. The results were announced on 30 November, at the start of the conference — held virtually this year — that takes stock of the exercise.

“This is a big deal,” says John Moult, a computational biologist at the University of Maryland in College Park, who co-founded CASP in 1994 to improve computational methods for accurately predicting protein structures. “In some sense the problem is solved.”

To learn more, check out the links below:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03348-4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg7WjuFs8F4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQzOk6HSs0c

https://deepmind.com/blog/article/alphafold-a-solution-to-a-50-year-old-grand-challenge-in-biology

https://deepmind.com/blog/article/AlphaFold-Using-AI-for-scientific-discovery

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/1/21754310/deepmind-alphafold-ai-protein-folding-casp-competition