Go, a very strategic board game that originated over 3000 years ago in China, is known as one of the most challenging classical games for artificial intelligence (AI) (DeepMind, n.d.). Still, in 2015 an algorithm called AlphaGo was released by the company DeepMind and has since beat professional Go players and world champions on a consistent basis (DeepMind, n.d.a). Today, AlphaGo is considered an AI breakthrough and the strongest Go player in the world (DeepMind, n.d.; Meyer, 2017).
The company behind AlphaGo, DeepMind, is an AI R&D company that was acquired by Google in 2014 (DeepMind, n.d.b). While many might have heard of DeepMind and AlphaGo before, fewer people have heard of AlphaFold. AlphaFold is another algorithm developed by DeepMind that was presented to the public at the end of 2018 (DeepMind, n.d.c). Some say that AlphaFold is DeepMind’s biggest strike yet and could have a strong impact on our lives in the future (Zonnev, 2019). It is an algorithm that predicts a protein’s 3D structure based on its genetic sequence (DeepMind, n.d.c). So far, scientists have spent a lot of time understanding our DNA, but still struggle with a basic question in protein folding: how does a protein must be folded, so that it will work in the way it is supposed to (Zonnev, 2018)? If scientists could learn the process of protein folding better, they can find out exactly what a protein does and how it might cause harm (Sample, 2018). This could help in designing new proteins to fight diseases or help with other tasks, such as breaking down plastic in the environment (Sample, 2018).
DeepMind’s AlphaFold has participated in the CASP competition last year, which is a scientific competition where they test people’s ability to model proteins (Koonce, 2019). AlphaFold won first place and was able to correctly predict the folding of proteins 25 out of 43 times, while the second place only predicted 3 correct (Wiggers, 2018). Nevertheless, there are still some people who argue that AlphaFold’s algorithm is not as much of a breakthrough yet (see for example Al Quraishi, 2018; Service, 2018).
In conclusion, protein folding is a very complex topic and I need to understand it better first in order to grasp the implications of AlphaFold. Nonetheless, I personally find it very interesting when AIs enter the space of biology and could help us in solving some of life’s biggest mysteries that could significantly improve our lives in the future.
References
Al Quraishi, M. (2018). AlphaFold @ CASP13: “What just happened?”. Retrieved from https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold-casp13-what-just-happened/
DeepMind. (n.d.a). AlphaGo. Retrieved from https://deepmind.com/research/case-studies/alphago-the-story-so-far
DeepMind. (n.d.b). About. Retrieved from https://deepmind.com/about
DeepMind. (n.d.c). AlphaFold: Using AI for scientific discovery. Retrieved from https://deepmind.com/blog/article/alphafold
Koonce, B. (2019). An Introduction to AlphaFold and Protein Modeling. Retrieved from https://medium.com/quark-works/an-introduction-to-alphafold-and-protein-modeling-b83edadcff2b
Meyer, D. (2017). Google’s New AlphaGo Breakthrough Could Take Algorithms Where No Humans Have Gone. Retrieved from https://fortune.com/2017/10/19/google-alphago-zero-deepmind-artificial-intelligence/
Sample, I. (2018). Google’s DeepMind predicts 3D shapes of proteins. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/02/google-deepminds-ai-program-alphafold-predicts-3d-shapes-of-proteins
Service, F., R. (2018). Google’s DeepMind aces protein folding. Retrieved from https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/google-s-deepmind-aces-protein-folding
Wiggers, K. (2018). Deepmind’s AlphaFold wins CASP13 protein-folding competition. Retrieved from https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/03/deepminds-alphafold-wins-casp13-protein-folding-competition/
Zonnev, C. (2019). How Google Is Decoding Nature’s Formula Of Life — Using AI — This is Their Biggest Strike Yet. Retrieved from https://towardsdatascience.com/https-medium-com-decoding-natures-formula-of-life-using-ai-this-is-google-deepmind-biggest-strike-yet-2da4a5992729
