Artificial Intelligence makes a gigantic leap in solving protein structures

ondon-based AI lab, DeepMind, has largely cracked the problem. A better understanding of protein shapes could play a pivotal role in the development of novel drugs to treat disease. The advance by Google-owned DeepMind is expected to accelerate research into a host of illnesses, including COVID-19. Their program determined the shape of proteins at a level of accuracy comparable to expensive and time-consuming lab methods, said independent scientists.

In the latest round of the challenge, Casp-14, AlphaFold determined the shape of around two-thirds of the proteins with accuracy comparable to laboratory experiments. The assessors said accuracy with most of the other proteins was also high, though not quite at that level.

AlphaFold is based on a concept called deep learning. In this process, the structure of a folded protein is represented as a spatial graph. The program then “learns” using the information on the 3-D shapes of known proteins held in a worldwide database. The AI program was able to do what might take years at the laboratory bench in a matter of days.

Knowing the 3-D structure of a protein is important in drug design and in understanding human diseases, including cancer, dementia, and infectious diseases.

One example is COVID-19, where scientists have been studying how the spike protein on the surface of the Sars-CoV-2 virus interacts with receptors in human cells.
Ref: BBC