Artificial intelligence (AI) is crossing barriers. Tech engineers are making it work beyond the digital world. Google DeepMind is making it work in the field of biology. Lately, the team has introduced latest version of its AlphaFold program, which is claimed to have the ability to predict functioning of proteins within living organisms.
The announcement is being celebrated among researchers citing it to be a major step forward in offering fresh insights into biological processes that sustain life. The milestone AI breakthrough includes advancing antibiotics and cancer therapies too.
Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs CEO Demis Hassabis cited the importance of understanding biological systems. He said that biology is a dynamic system and it is important to understand properties of biology.
The previous versions of AlphaFold mainly focused on predicting the 3D structures of proteins and it was essential in understanding their functions in organisms. The newest version is AlphaFold3 and it is capable in predicting how proteins interact with other molecules and ions.
The study was published in the latest edition of Nature journal. It explained how AlphaFold3 can predict the interactions of proteins with various biological components. It is claimed that the accuracy is up to 76%.
Google DeepMind researcher John Jumper said that they are working on unlocking a lot of new science and the potential of AlphaFold3 is to understand the cellular processes and disease mechanisms.
As of now, the AlphaFold3 is made available to academic researchers for non-commercial use. They can access it through Google’s dedicated server and thereafter explore hypotheses as well as accelerate discoveries.
Dr. Julien Bergeron from King’s College London praised the transformative impact of AlphaFold3 in pre-lab testing.