Google's AI Lab, DeepMind, Offers 'Gift to Humanity' with Protein Structure Solution

Matt Higgins and his team of researchers at the University of Oxford had a problem. For years, they had been studying the parasite that spreads malaria, a disease that still kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. They had identified an important protein on the surface of the parasite as a focal point for a potential future vaccine. They knew its underlying chemical code. But the protein's all-important 3D structure was eluding them. That shape was the key to developing the right vaccine to slide in and block the parasite from infecting human cells.