Human Proteins: Now Free with No Ads
Google’s DeepMind has opened an enormous protein structure database up to citizens of the Internet
Google’s AI subsidiary, DeepMind, has taken another great leap forward in science, business, and open sourcing by releasing both their AlphaFold algorithm source code and their protein structure database.
AlphaFold is a program created by DeepMind in 2016 to predict protein structures. Four years after its launch, AlphaFold’s predictions matched those of lab techniques. The program has consistently outperformed all its peers – and, over time, itself. It works at rapid speed, and with need of far less resources than any human in a lab.
Both AlphaFold’s v2.0 algorithm and its library of 350,000 protein sequences are now available online for free. DeepMind’s CEO, Demis Hassabis, has expressed his hopes that the pharmaceutical industry will make use of this valuable new resource.
Between studying for my English undergrad and Publishing master's degrees I was out in Shanghai, teaching, learning, and getting extremely lost. Now I'm expanding my mind down a rather different rabbit hole: the pharmaceutical industry. Outside of this job I read mountains of fiction and philosophy, and I must say, it's very hard to tell who's sharper: the literati, or the medicine makers.