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Crystal structure of a chaperonin protein complex, which assists with protein folding. The highlighted portion is a single subunit. Image: Thomas Splettstoesser/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is long past its initial days. From predicting nutrient deficiencies in the soil to helping physicians with medical decisions, AI has been providing novel solutions for tricky real world challenges.
Now, some researchers have claimed an AI they are working with has solved one of modern biology’s grand challenges: the protein-folding problem.
The British AI company behind this feat, DeepMind, has claimed that its new programme AlphaFold can process the sequence of amino acids that cells use to produce each protein and accurately predict the protein’s shape.