AI solves a 50-year old problem in biology
Would this be the first Nobel prize given to an artificial intelligence?
Before we go into the problem, you need to have a crash course on Proteins, which are large biomolecules essential to all living things. There are many types of proteins inside the human body such as:
Digestive Enzymes: Help in the digestion of food (I.e.: Amylase, Lipase);
Transport: Carry substances in the blood or lymph throughout the body (I.e.: Hemoglobin);
Structural: Construct different structures, like the cytoskeleton (I.e.: Keratin);
Hormones: Coordinate the activity of different body systems (i.e.: insulin or thyroxine);
Defense: Protect the body from foreign pathogens (i.e.: Immunoglobulin);
Contractile: Effect muscle contraction (I.e.: Myosin, Actin);
Storage: Provide nourishment in the early development of the embryo and the seedling (I.e.: Albumin).
Proteins differ from one another primarily in their sequence of amino acids and which usually results in protein folding into a specific 3D structure that determines its activity. The video below explains the process clearly.
It is estimated there are 200M proteins in Nature, and the techniques used for half a century to predict protein folding (based only on the amino acid profile) were complex, expensive, slow, and extremely inefficient. On December 1, Deepmind, a division of Google focused on AI research, announced they solved the intractable problem by using a sophisticated and precise machine learning neural network called Alphafold 2, which is decades ahead of other methods.
Read the full blog post and watch the video below for more details.
Why should I care about this?
If the results are proven true through peer-reviewing, Alphafold 2 and its subsequent versions will help scientists understand more about millions of proteins in the next years leading to a revolution in the field of biotech including drug and vaccine development, understanding of diseases, and even synthetic biology.
The breakthrough, which might be a serious candidate to win a Nobel Prize, will lead to an exponential growth of the biotech industry in the decades to come, providing millions of jobs to researchers and unlocking brand new fields of knowledge.
However, if you think about following a career in biology, chemistry, medicine, or any kind of biomedical research, be aware that computer science and, especially, artificial intelligence, will be an integral part of your journey. The sooner you learn it the more competitive you will become in the future jobs market.