The crystal clarity of deep learning

Crystallography is the researcher's tool of choice to reveal protein structure – but it can be slow and laborious. Crystallography has long been an indispensable tool for elucidating the structure of a wide variety of molecules. This is especially true of biological macromolecules, which has granted generations of researchers insight into how these large molecules work and interact. For pharmaceutical research, understanding the structure of a protein assists researchers in the rational design of new small and large molecule therapeutics as they can tailor their candidates to more effectively interact with their target. However, while the number of complete structures in protein structure databases has grown exponentially over the past decade, there still are gaps in these databases due to the laborious nature of determining a de novo protein structure.