AI protein-folding algorithms solve structures faster than ever
nature.com- In a quest to better understand diseases and design drugs, scientists are using AI to predict the 3D structures of proteins from their amino-acid sequences.
- It is one of biology’s grandest challenges, and many teams are competing to build the ultimate algorithm - including Google’s DeepMind and Harvard’s biologists.
- DeepMind’s tool is currently leading, but there are several more teams working towards the same goal.
- Computational predictions can’t be widely used in drug design yet.
- But they are already becoming accurate enough for other applications, like studying protein mutations that lead to disease, or which part of a protein can be a vaccine.