DeepMind's AI program AlphaFold3 can predict the structure of every protein in the universe — and show how they function

DeepMind has unveiled the third version of its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered structural biology software, AlphaFold, which models how proteins fold. 

Structural biology is the molecular basis study of biological materials — including proteins and nucleic acids —and aims to reveal how they are structured, work, and interact. 

AlphaFold3 helps scientists more accurately predict how proteins — large molecules that play a critical role in all life forms, from plants and Animals to human cells — interact with other biological molecules, including DNA and RNA. Doing so will enable scientists to “truly understand life’s processes,” DeepMind representatives wrote in a blog post. 

By comparison, its predecessors, AlphaFold and AlphaFold2, could only predict the shapes that proteins fold into. That was still a major scientific breakthrough at the time. 

AlphaFold3's predictions could help scientists develop bio-renewable materials, crops with greater resistance, new drugs and more, the research team wrote in a study published May 8 in the journal Nature. 

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Given a list of molecules, the AI program can show how they fit together. It does this not only for large molecules like proteins, DNA, and RNA but also for small molecules known as ligands, which bind to receptors on large proteins like key fitting into a lock.