Understanding proteins and their complex 3D shapes is key to understanding life, and especially for developing drugs
Life
| Analysis
29 July 2022
Proteins are chains of amino acids that fold up into complex 3D shapes DeepMind
AlphaFold, DeepMind’s artificial intelligence that predicts the structure of proteins, is a gift to biologists.
To understand life, we need to understand proteins. Living things are molecular machines, and most of the key components are made of proteins. You are reading this article, for instance, with proteins in your retina that can detect light, various proteins that make your muscles move and so on.
In one way, proteins are simple. They are made of chains that can contain …
