In 2021, AI research lab DeepMind announced the development of its first digital biology neural network, AlphaFold. The model was capable of accurately predicting the 3D structure of proteins, which determines the functions that these molecules play. 'We're just floating bags of water moving around,' says Pushmeet Kohli, VP of research at DeepMind. 'What makes us special are proteins, the building blocks of life. How they interact with each other is what makes the magic of life happen.' AlphaFold was considered by the journal Science as the breakthrough of the year in 2021. In 2022, it was the most cited research paper in AI. 'People have been on [protein structures] for many decades and were not able to make that much progress,' Kohli says. 'Then came AI.' DeepMind also released the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database'which contained the protein structures of almost every organism whose genome has been sequenced'making it freely available to scientists worldwide. More than 1.7...
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