We are seeing the birth of a revolution in the world of biology. DeepMind’s artificial intelligence, AlphaFold, has increased its database to incredible levels. Two years after its arrival, AlphaFold can already provide information on more than 200 million proteins. According to those responsible, this means, Information from every organism on Earth whose genome has been sequenced“.

AlphaFold, in collaboration with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), is software that predicts the molecular structure of proteins very precisely. Extremely useful information to know exactly how they work. And then being able to develop drugs and treat diseases. Because the great thing about AlphaFold is not only its enormous computational potential for understanding biology, but also All this information is available to the entire scientific community..

“The greatest contribution of artificial intelligence to scientific knowledge to date”

The scope of AlphaFold is enormous, to the point that DeepMind’s AI director Pushmeet Kohli calls it “AI’s greatest contribution to scientific knowledge to date.”

Until now, understanding the complex structure of each protein required lengthy and tedious experiments to verify its final shape and be able to design specific drugs. Now, this work is done by artificial intelligence with extremely high precision. Y in just one year he managed to multiply his knowledge by 200.

In July 2021, DeepMind published the most complete map of human proteins to date, with nearly 1 million structures. Now DeepMind has not only republished this map, but expanded it to 200 million protein structures to cover basically all known living organisms. match almost all scientific information to date.

The speed with which AI understands the structure of proteins is much faster than what humans can do manually. To match AlphaFold’s work, it would take people thousands of years without this technology.

DeepMind is owned by Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, the research described as “a giant milestone”. AlphaFold’s reach is already bearing fruit in the form of other companies, such as the founding of a dedicated company, Isomorphic Labs. Creation of new drugs based on AI calculations.

“It now takes seconds to determine the 3D structure of a protein that used to take months or years. With the addition of these new structures, which describe nearly the entire protein universe, we can expect more biological mysteries to be solved every day“, told Eric Topol, director of Scripps Research, one of the world’s most prestigious biomedical centers.

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