2024-05-29 11:00:02
DeepMind recently released the third version of its artificial intelligence-assisted structural biology software, AlphaFold3. This new version promises major advances in the prediction of molecular interactions, facilitating numerous scientific and medical applications.
Structural biology focuses on understanding the molecular structures of biological materials, such as proteins and nucleic acids. AlphaFold3 goes beyond its predecessors by providing increased accuracy in predicting interactions between proteins and other biomolecules, such as DNA and RNA.
AlphaFold3 is helping researchers better understand the fundamental molecular mechanisms of life. By predicting how proteins bind and interact with other biological molecules, it opens the door to innovations in a variety of fields. For example, in agriculture, AlphaFold3 could help develop more resilient crops. In medicine, it could accelerate the discovery of new drugs. A study published in Nature May 8 highlights that the program can predict interactions not only between large molecules such as proteins, but also with small molecules called ligands. These ligands play a crucial role in binder to receptors on proteins, much like a key fits into a lock. AlphaFold3 can also model chemical changes in these biomolecules, which may be involved in diseases.
The researchers claim that AlphaFold3 is 50% more accurate than current methods for predicting protein structures and their interactions. In pharmaceutical research, AlphaFold3 has outperformed existing docking programs and RoseTTAFold All-Atom, a neural network for predicting biomolecular structures. Frank Uhlmann, a biochemist atInstitut Francis Crick of Londonuses AlphaFold3 to predict the structures of proteins interacting with DNA, with mostly accurate results.
However, AlphaFold3 is no longer open source, limiting scientists’ access to the model’s code and training data. For non-commercial research, researchers can use the recently launched AlphaFold server. This free service allows molecular sequences to be submitted and predictions to be received in minutes, although it is limited to 20 tasks per jour.
AlphaFold3 represents a giant leap in structural biology and opens new perspectives for scientific and medical research. Its potential to revolutionize the understanding of biomolecular interactions is immense, promising significant advances in various fields.
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