A chess-playing AI network solved a 50-year-old biological dilemma, potentially revolutionizing drug development


DeepMind's AI networks have spent the past few years destroying human players in chess, Go, and classic video games. Now, they're ready to help humans out.
On Monday, DeepMind revealed its AI system AlphaFold had cracked a 50-year-old biological challenge, accurately predicting how proteins within the human body fold into 3D shapes based on their DNA sequences. Those shapes are key in determining how a protein works, and in turn pivotal to figuring out how to treat diseases that involve those proteins, The Guardian explains.
Proteins, which are sequences of amino acids within living creatures, can "bend into a mind-boggling variety of shapes," The Guardian writes. It takes about a year and costs around $120,000 to identify a single protein's shape using the most common method, known as X-ray crystallography, Fortune reports. DeepMind had AlphaFold study 170,000 protein sequences and shapes that had already been identified, and after a few weeks, AlphaFold was ready to face off against other computer-based protein structure predictors in an international competition called CASP.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
When asked to extrapolate 100 protein shapes from their amino acid sequences, AlphaFold beat out every other program in CASP and produced results that rivaled lab methods. It predicted a protein's structure within an atom's width of accuracy in two-thirds of those proteins, and was "highly accurate" in the other third, per Fortune. It also only took a few days to identify each protein.
CASP co-founder John Moult called AlphaFold's results a "big deal," telling Nature that "in some sense the problem is solved." If scientists can more quickly figure out a protein's shape, they can find out how it affects other cells — for example, discovering how COVID-19's spike proteins latch onto host cells helped scientists develop vaccines that reduce transmission. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said the company is working on how to share AlphaFold with researchers, and that some scientists have already started using it on vexing protein analyses of their own.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.
-
Is Hamas losing control in Gaza?
Today's Big Question Balance of power among remaining leaders shifts as rival group emerges and population turns
-
Mario Kart World: Nintendo Switch 2's flagship game is 'unfailingly fun'
The Week Recommends The 'thrilling' racer includes a range of new features including open-world exploration
-
Frozen pizza sales could be a key indicator of a recession
The Explainer Sales of the item have been increasing since the pandemic
-
Dehorning rhinos sharply cuts poaching, study finds
Speed Read The painless procedure may be an effective way to reduce the widespread poaching of rhinoceroses
-
Breakthrough gene-editing treatment saves baby
speed read KJ Muldoon was healed from a rare genetic condition
-
Sea lion proves animals can keep a beat
speed read A sea lion named Ronan beat a group of college students in a rhythmic dance-off, says new study
-
Humans heal much slower than other mammals
Speed Read Slower healing may have been an evolutionary trade-off when we shed fur for sweat glands
-
Novel 'bone collector' caterpillar wears its prey
Speed Read Hawaiian scientists discover a carnivorous caterpillar that decorates its shell with the body parts of dead insects
-
Scientists find hint of alien life on distant world
Speed Read NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has detected a possible signature of life on planet K2-18b
-
Katy Perry, Gayle King visit space on Bezos rocket
Speed Read Six well-known women went into lower orbit for 11 minutes
-
Scientists map miles of wiring in mouse brain
Speed Read Researchers have created the 'largest and most detailed wiring diagram of a mammalian brain to date,' said Nature