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DeepMind’s AlphaFold. A simple AI solution to a challenging 3D protein folding problem
Author: Dr Maciej Trzaskowski (Research Lead at Max Kelsen)
In 2018 and currently in 2020, DeepMind submitted their newly developed AlphaFold and AlphaFold 2 AI-based model to Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP13). CASP is an independent community wide experiment that invites participants every two years to test their predictive models on experimental proteins that are not yet publicly available. The aim is to predict 3D structures of these new proteins from amino acid sequences. Importantly, the performance is validated by a panel of independent assessors who do not know the identity of those who make the submissions, nor do the participants have access to the experimental structures of the proteins (double-blinded design).
CASP13* saw 98 research groups from 21 countries, submitting 185 modelling methods with more than 57,000 predictions in six categories:
- Overall structure of proteins.
- Refinement of an approximate structure closer to the experimental one.
- Accuracy of an overall structure of the model and of each residue.
- The structure of protein oligomers.
- The ability to improve models using a variety of…
