AlphaFold: Prediction of Protein Structures

August 2, 2022

DeepMind Technologies, an Alphabet-owned AI research company, has developed an artificial intelligence tool called “AlphaFold”. This tool predicts and publishes the structures of all proteins, which is the building blocks of life. Thus, this tool unlocks the most influential databases for biological research.

Important facts of the AlphaFold tool include;

AlphaFold has released the structures of more than 200 million protein structures in association with the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI).
It comprises of predicted structures for plants, animals, bacteria, and organisms.
This release opens up several new opportunities for researchers to use AlphaFold, in a bid promote their work on important issues, like food insecurity, sustainability, and neglected diseases.
AlphaFold revels how combination of amino acids come together and “fold” to create a protein structure.
For example, Sars-Cov-2 has a protein, folding as a spike. This shape is significant for biologists because it helps in designing antibodies and therapeutics.
The three-dimensional information is usually collected using cryo-electron microscopes.

In December 2020, AlphaFold had crossed the threshold to predict protein folding or structure, only from the amino acid sequences with a high accuracy. Since then, it is being used for creating the database that has been released now.

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