Alpha Fold: A tour de force in science

Subject :Science and Technology

Section : Awareness in IT

DeepMind, a company owned by Google, announced this week that it had predicted the three-dimensional structures of more than 200 million proteins using AlphaFold.

What is AlphaFold?

AlphaFold is an AI-based protein structure prediction tool. It is based on a computer system called deep neural network. Inspired by the human brain, neural networks use a large amount of input data and provides the desired output exactly like how a human brain would.
The real work is done by the black box between the input and the output layers, called the hidden networks.
AlphaFold is fed with protein sequences as input. When protein sequences enter through one end, the predicted three-dimensional structures come out through the other. It is like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.

How does AlphaFold work?

AlphaFold is an AI-based protein structure prediction tool. It used processes based on “training, learning, retraining and relearning” to predict the structures of the entire 214 million unique protein sequences deposited in the Universal Protein Resource (UniProt) database.

What are the implications of this development?

Proteins are the business ends of biology, meaning proteins carry out all the functions inside a living cell.
Therefore, knowing protein structure and function is essential to understanding human diseases.
Scientists predict protein structures using x-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, or cryogenic electron microscopy.
These techniques are not just time-consuming, they often take years and are based mainly on trial-and-error methods. The development of AlphaFold changes all of that. It is a watershed movement in science and structural biology in particular.

What does this development mean for India?

The Indian community of structural biology needs to take advantage of the AlphaFold database and learn how to use the structures to design better vaccines and drugs.

Is AlphaFold one-of-a-kind tool in predicting protein structures?

Although a tour-de-force in structural biology, like any other method, AlphaFold is neither flawless nor the only AI-based protein structure prediction tool.
RoseTTaFold, developed by David Baker at the University of Washington in Seattle, U.S., is another tool. Although less accurate than AlphaFold, it can predict the structure of protein complexes.