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takyon writes:

DeepMind creates 'transformative' map of human proteins drawn by artificial intelligence

AI research lab DeepMind has created the most comprehensive map of human proteins to date using artificial intelligence. The company, a subsidiary of Google-parent Alphabet, is releasing the data for free, with some scientists comparing the potential impact of the work to that of the Human Genome Project, an international effort to map every human gene.

[...] Previously, determining the structure of a protein relied on expensive and time-consuming experiments. But last year DeepMind showed it can produce accurate predictions of a protein's structure using AI software called AlphaFold. Now, the company is releasing hundreds of thousands of predictions made by the program to the public.

"I see this as the culmination of the entire 10-year-plus lifetime of DeepMind," company CEO and co-founder Demis Hassabis told The Verge. "From the beginning, this is what we set out to do: to make breakthroughs in AI, test that on games like Go and Atari, [and] apply that to real-world problems, to see if we can accelerate scientific breakthroughs and use those to benefit humanity."

Also at BBC and Ars Technica.

Highly accurate protein structure prediction for the human proteome (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03828-1) (DX)

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