Artificial intelligence identifies every protein on planet earth
The study of biology is set to change forever after AlphaFold, an artificial intelligence developed by DeepMind, recently managed to update its database with information from 200 million proteins, which scientists believe “This is information about every organism on Earth whose genomes have been sequenced.”
AlphaFold, Created in partnership with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), it has sought to accurately predict the molecular structure of all proteins known to science since its inception. To advance at a higher speed in the development and innovation of the healthcare sector, such as the invention of new medicines and the discovery of cures for various diseases.
Similarly, it is planned that all the information discovered by this technology will be made available to the entire scientific community of the world, as Pushmeet Kohli, director of AlphaFold, said that this “is the biggest contribution of AI to scientific knowledge to date”. date”.
Before this artificial intelligence began to function, identifying the molecular structure of a single protein required long research and experimental processes, which meant that, for example, the development of new drugs took time, however, this technology has expanded its database by 200, implying the progress of science.
deep mind The company that created this artificial intelligence published in July 2021 the most complete map of human proteins in history, with almost a million biological structures. But now The record was expanded, and they revealed the composition of the 200 million proteins found, corresponding to all living things on the planet, including animals and plants. In this way, every scientific team in the world will have an excellent working tool.
It is interesting in the case Without the support of this technology, it would have taken human civilization thousands of years to manually find the molecular structures of all these millions of proteins. So the speed of this computer system is unmatched.
Similarly, the impact of this technology is already beginning to affect various aspects of daily life, since then Isomorphic Labs is a pharmaceutical company founded to develop medicines based on AlphaFold’s discoveries.
It should be clarified that this artificial intelligence was created by Alphabet, which in turn is part of Google, and for this reason the CEO of the organization Sundar Pichai, in turn, called the Silicon Valley technology company AlphaFold a “giant milestone”. “
For their part, some members of the global scientific community have already begun to speak out. In particular, Eric Topol, director of one of the most prestigious biomedical research centers in the world. ScrippsResearchAssured that: “Determining the 3D structure of a protein used to take months or years, but now it takes seconds.” With this new addition of structures describing nearly the entire protein universe, we can expect more biological mysteries to be solved every day. “
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