Building Blocks of Life – DeepMind to Release Shape Database of Every Protein Known to Science

August 02, 2021

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by Helena Tavares Kennedy (Biofuels Digest) They are the building blocks of life. Proteins. Can you imagine solving the protein structure prediction problem? Who would have thought a company that started in 2010 with testing AI on 49 different Atari games and being the first AI program to beat a professional Go player, a feat described as a decade ahead of its time, would now be leading the way with solving the protein folding problem? DeepMind will soon release a database of the shape of every protein known to science — more than 100 million. That’s every structured protein in the human body, as well as in 20 research species.

In today’s Digest, what is AlphaFold, what is DeepMind doing that is being touted “one of the most important datasets since the mapping of the Human Genome”, how this AI is changing the world, and more.

Tackling the protein folding problem

It’s a 50 year old challenge, now being solved by DeepMind. There are about 100 million known distinct proteins with more found all the time. Each one unique. But how do we unravel them, how do we look at their structure just from its sequence of amino acids, and tackle the the protein folding problem?

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Scientists have long been interested in determining the structures of proteins because a protein’s form is thought to dictate its function. Once a protein’s shape is understood, its role within the cell can be guessed at, and scientists can develop drugs that work with the protein’s unique shape.

“Protein folding is a problem I’ve had my eye on for more than 20 years,” DeepMind cofounder and CEO Demis Hassabis told Technology Review. “It’s been a huge project for us. I would say this is the biggest thing we’ve done so far. And it’s the most exciting in a way, because it should have the biggest impact in the world outside of AI.”

All about AlphaFold

DeepMind has been working on this since 2016 and created an AI system known as AlphaFold. It was taught by showing it the sequences and structures of around 100,000 known proteins.

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Being used in real life

AlphaFold is already being used by their partners.

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Bottom Line

The launching of the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database offers the most complete and accurate picture of the human proteome to date, more than doubling humanity’s accumulated knowledge of high-accuracy human protein structures.

Keep an eye on this as in the coming months, DeepMind plans to vastly expand the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database to almost every sequenced protein known to science. READ MORE