Protein Storytelling to Address the Pandemic
New computational tools developed at Stony Brook University help characterize protein structures and identify new treatments for COVID-19
Published on December 3, 2020 by Aaron Dubrow
CMP modeling of COVID-19 infecting the human cell. [Credit: Lucy Fallon, Laufer Center]
In the last five decades, we've learned a lot about the secret lives of proteins — how they work, what they interact with, the machinery that makes them function — and the pace of discovery is accelerating.
The first three-dimensional protein structure began emerging in the 1970s. Today, the Protein Data Bank, a worldwide repository of information about the 3D structures of large biological molecules, has information about hundreds of thousands of proteins. Just this week, the company DeepMind shocked the protein structure world with its accurate, AI-driven predictions.