DeepMind will soon publish the structure of every protein known to science

DeepMind, a sister company of Google, is giving the world access to a massive protein structure database -- a gift that has the potential to revolutionize scientific research. "This will be one of the most important datasets since the mapping of the Human Genome," Ewan Birney, deputy director general of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, which partnered with DeepMind on the database, said in a press release. Protein structure: Proteins are molecules that are hugely important to the functioning of living organisms, including humans -- practically everything we're made of and everything our cells do is determined by our proteins. "It's the most significant contribution AI has made to advancing scientific knowledge to date." Every protein is made up of a long string of hundreds or even thousands of chemical compounds called amino acids, and the way that ribbon folds on itself determines the protein's function.