DeepMind AI can predict if DNA mutations are likely to be harmful

Google DeepMind's AlphaMissense AI can predict whether mutations will affect how proteins such as haemoglobin subunit beta (left) or cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (right) will function Artificial intelligence firm Google DeepMind has adapted its AlphaFold system for predicting protein structure to assess whether a huge number of simple mutations are harmful. The adapted system, called AlphaMissense, has done this for 71 million possible mutations of a kind called missense mutations in the 20,000 human proteins, and the results made freely available. "We think this is very helpful for clinicians and human geneticists," says Jun Cheng at Google DeepMind. "Hopefully, this can help them to pinpoint the cause of genetic disease." Almost everyone is born with between about 50 and 100 mutations not found in their parents, resulting in a huge amount of genetic variation between individuals.