DeepMind, an artificial intelligence (AI) research company, and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s (EMBL) European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), have used AI-powered technology to predict the three-dimensional structure of almost every protein known to science.
The research is open access and can be viewed through the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database.
The two organisations plan to expand the database by approximately 200 times, from nearly one million protein structures to more than 200 million, which they claim covers almost every organism on Earth that has had its genome sequenced.
According to the pair, this will open up new scientific opportunities by allowing researchers to monitor trends and patterns in the data.
“AlphaFold now offers a 3D view of the protein universe,” said Edith Heard, director general of EMBL.
“The popularity and growth of the AlphaFold Database is testament to the success of the collaboration between DeepMind and EMBL.
“It shows us a glimpse of the power of multidisciplinary science.”
The AlphaFold database was first established in July 2021 and included more than 350,000 protein structure predictions, as well as the entire human proteome.
Since then, reportedly more than 1,000 scientific papers have cited the database and over 500,000 researchers have accessed its data.
The research duo claims that AlphaFold has been beneficial in research areas such as plastic pollution, Parkinson’s disease, honey bees, ice formation, neglected diseases and human evolution.
DeepMind and EBI intend to continuously update the database to implement user feedback and improve its functionality.
