Artificial Intelligence outlines the future of structural biology

20 Aug 2021

Three recent papers published on July 15, July 22, and August 20, 2021, two by DeepMind company in Nature (July) and one by David Baker and coworkers in Science (August), bring a breakthrough in structural biology comparable to previous major instrumental and methodological innovations. The published studies clearly demonstrate that advanced modeling programs AlphaFold2 and RosseTTAFold, based on artificial intelligence, can predict the precise 3D atomic structures of proteins with high confidence. The Reader’s Corner on our website presents all three papers together with the Editorials from Nature and Science magazines, along with a commentary by Patrick Cramer (MPI for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen). It is a “must-read” not only for all structural biologists, but also for the whole community, as these new tools outline the future of structural biology. The seminal contributions to the development of machine-learning algorithms will greatly facilitate and accelerate biomedical applications and life science research requiring structural knowledge at atomic resolution.