DeepMind's AlphaFold AI Predicts nearly all protein structures known to science
200 million proteins and counting
AUGUST 1ST, 2022 8:20 PM MONTREAL, CANADA.
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Hey Guys,
The impact of artificial intelligence on science has perhaps never felt more tangible. In the history of chemistry and biology this is a major moment.
Last week, the artificial intelligence company DeepMind, in partnership with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), has released the predicted structures for almost every protein known to science – over 200 million structures in total.
Google has essentially unlocked the protein universe to usher in a new era of biotechnology, genomics and life science. I’ve written a lot about the impact of A.I. in healthcare and science, but it’s hard to ignore now Alphabet’s contribution to it.
AlphaFold reveals the structure of the protein universe
July 28th, 2022 was a beautiful day for AlphaFold.
Video by DeepMind on AlphaFold.
I’m still assessing and admiring the Thursday announcement. As you remember from biology class, proteins are complex biological molecules produced in living organisms from instructions stored in DNA. Made from as many as 20 types of amino acids, these nano-scale chains perform vital cellular tasks to carry out all sorts of bodily functions.
AI’s Gift to Humanity
The thing is this is not about AlphaFold, or DeepMind or even Google, it’s about the gift of artificial intelligence. Nobody but AI should get the credit here.
A year ago DeepMind open-sourced #AlphaFold and on Thursday they finally freely shared the predicted structures of all 200M+ proteins known to science - almost the entire protein universe! This is AI’s gift to humanity, and a reminder that the benefits AI can bring to society, the good, in the long-term will likely outweigh the bad. Though not as easily as BigTech and companies like Alphabet, Microsoft or Amazon promise.
DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014, it is nothing more than an AI lab under Alphabet. They are not benefactors or owners of any gift to humanity, they are just researchers contributing to what A.I. can do for all of humanity. GOOGL Still, AlphaFold is a sign of things to come for A.I.’s impact on healthcare, science, chemistry, biology and physics.
Proteins are essential to life, and understanding their structure can facilitate a mechanistic understanding of their function. Just as we are learning about the history of the Universe with the new images from the James Webb Space Telescope, we are at what Microsoft’s AI4Science calls the 5th paradigm of scientific discovery.
Alphabet’s own Quantum spin-off Sandbox AQ’s Jack Hilary would call this the 7th wave of Quantum computing where AQ stands for artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
So whatever you want to call it, there’s a momentum period now where A.I. will impact science in a more tangible way, open up new possibilities.
You can also visualize this:
The structures were produced using DeepMind’s AlphaFold system, which predicts the 3D structure of proteins based on their amino acid sequences.
AlphaFold has been accessed by more than half a million researchers and used to accelerate progress on important real-world problems.
The structural bounty comes from AlphaFold, one of the new AI programs that have cracked the protein-folding problem, the long-standing challenge of accurately deriving the 3D shapes of proteins from their amino acid sequences.
AlphaFold was trained on hundreds of thousands of known protein structures, and learned the relationships between the constituent amino acids and the final overall shapes.
It’s mind-boggling to appreciate what AI is offering us here.
“AlphaFold is the singular and momentous advance in life science that demonstrates the power of AI,” - Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute
The proteins solved by AlphaFold come from organisms ranging from bacteria to plants to vertebrates, including mice, zebrafish, and humans.
Human beings ready or not will have to learn to become better custodians of life. It’s a challenge and a responsibility I can only hope our generation and our descendants will take seriously.
To think that we are mapping life, even has we have irrevocably changed it on our planet simply due to our sentience is scary and beautiful at the same time.
Ushering in a new era in digital biology
What will come of this work and what will humans do with it? In theory, Artificial intelligence has now deciphered the structure of virtually every protein known to science, paving the way for the development of new medicines or technologies to tackle global challenges such as famine or pollution.
We have to take a moment to meditate on this and about what this means for our shared collective future.
To date, more than 500,000 researchers from 190 countries have accessed the AlphaFold DB to view over 2 million structures.
Thanks for reading!
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