Google has quietly been working on enhancing their specialized artificial intelligence tool, AlphaFold. This software, developed by Google’s DeepMind AI unit, was originally created to predict the 3D structure of proteins. However, it has now received a significant upgrade allowing it to model other molecules of biological importance, such as DNA and the interactions between antibodies and disease organisms.
According to Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, the new capabilities of AlphaFold 3 are crucial for drug discovery. The software can now model large molecules like DNA, as well as smaller entities like metal ions, with high accuracy. This is essential in understanding how molecules interact with each other and how they bind to drugs.
AlphaFold 3 will be available for outside researchers to access via the cloud for free. However, the software will not be released as open source, unlike earlier versions. Google DeepMind and Isomorphic labs, a sibling company under Alphabet, are also collaborating on drug development with companies like Eli Lilly and Novartis, showcasing the potential applications of this AI technology in the biotech industry.
Traditionally, predicting protein structures required laborious work using electron microscopes and x-ray crystallography. However, with the advancements in deep learning, AlphaFold has revolutionized this process by accurately predicting protein shapes from their constituent amino acids. The release of AlphaFold 2 in 2020 produced groundbreaking results in molecular biology, and the latest version, AlphaFold 3, is set to provide even more insights into how proteins function in the body.
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