DeepMind's AI uncovers structure of 98.5 per cent of human proteins

It took decades of painstaking research to map the structure of just 17 per cent of the proteins used within the human body, but less than a year for UK-based AI company DeepMind to raise that figure to 98.5 per cent. The company is making all this data freely available, which could lead to rapid advances in the development of new drugs. Determining the complex, crumpled shape of proteins based on the sequence of amino acids that make them has been a huge scientific hurdle. Some amino acids are attracted to others, some are repelled by water, and the chains form intricate shapes that are hard to calculate accurately. Understanding these structures enables new, highly targeted drugs to be designed that bind to specific parts of proteins. Genetic research had long provided the ability to determine the sequence of a protein, but an efficient way of finding the shape – crucial to understanding its properties – has proven elusive.