AlphaFold 2 wins CASP14 and solves protein folding
In one sentence DeepMind announces that AlphaFold 2 has won the CASP14 competition with mean GDT >90, on par with experimental methods — widely regarded as solving the 50-year-old protein folding problem.
Proteins are the "molecular machines" that make every living thing work: digestion, immunity, cell signaling. Knowing the shape a protein folds into is essential to understanding it and designing drugs. Biologists had been chasing a way to predict that shape from the amino-acid sequence for 50 years.
A DeepMind team announces they did it. Their AlphaFold 2 system, in a blind international competition, predicts the structure of new proteins with accuracy comparable to lab experiments that cost months and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It's one of the rare cases where an AI system genuinely solves a big scientific problem. A revolution in biology and pharmacology starts here.
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