Although the term "breakthrough" is overused in scientific research, occasionally something will be a true breakthrough. The human genome was mapped using CRISPR-Cas 9, the first image of a black hole was captured, and over the past few years - DeepMind's AlphaFold protein structure database.
Proteins are incredibly complex for molecules that can only contain a few dozen different amino acids.
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Understanding these intricate 3D structures can help us understand what the protein does because each fold, twist, and position can affect how the protein functions.
However, removing these numerous layers of structures requires laborious and tedious work.
Only 17% of the protein structures in the human body had been identified in a lab by the early 2020s, even though the structure of proteins was the subject of two Nobel prizes in the 1960s.
However, DeepMind, an AI from Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has completely altered the game with AlphaFold.
Numerous significant discoveries have already been accelerated and made possible by AlphaFold, such as the discovery of the nuclear pore complex's structure "says Eric Topol, the Scripps Research Translational Institute's founder and executive director.
AlphaFold has been adding progressively more protein structures to its database over the past two years.
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The entire human proteome was present in 2021, followed by hundreds of thousands of new protein structures, including proteins.
The predicted structures for nearly all cataloged proteins known to science, 200 million protein structures have now been released, according to the researchers.
This includes microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and plants.
Ewan Birney, director of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), said that as someone who has worked in genomics and computational biology since the 1990s, "I've seen many of these moments where new resources are being made available and the landscape under you is changing, and this has been one of the quickest."
We simply did not realize this was possible two years ago, to put it simply.
The database, in his words, is "a gift to humanity."
Understanding protein structures helps researchers better understand how the protein functions.
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