Artificial intelligence has entered the field of genes and proteins, which is a breakthrough in the marriage of medical, pharmaceutical and life sciences with AI. It also means that AI has made steady progress in maintaining people's health, extending life and improving the quality of life.
Google's latest artificial intelligence software, Alpha Fold, defeated all of its opponents in an extremely difficult task, and successfully predicted the three-dimensional structure of the basic molecule of life based on the gene sequence.
This means that artificial intelligence has penetrated deep into the field of genes and proteins, which is a breakthrough in the marriage of medical, pharmaceutical and life sciences with AI. It also shows that AI has made steady progress in maintaining people's health, extending life and improving the quality of life.
Alpha Folding is designed to resolve protein folds. The organism and the human body possess a variety of proteins, which carry a variety of complex and important functions of the body, from food digestion to immune disease resistance, from sensory to motor function, etc., are inseparable from protein.
A simple protein often contains hundreds of amino acids, and its spatial structure is as high as 10 to 300. Not only the amino acid sequence in the protein determines life phenomena and diseases, but the spatial structure of the protein also determines physiological functions and diseases. As long as the structure of the protein is wrong, it will induce and cause various diseases such as diabetes, Parkinson's disease and Alz. Haimo disease and so on.
Therefore, the analysis of protein structure has become an important key to the diagnosis of diseases, the development of new drugs and the in-depth understanding of life phenomena after gene sequencing. Alpha Folding won the first place in the competition for parsing protein structures with 98 participants at the end of last year, and scored the highest score of 25 of the 43 proteins, ranking second. Only three of the teams received the highest predicted score.
This shows that alpha folding is more accurate in analyzing and predicting protein structure. This also shows that there are new tools for the diagnosis of diseases and the development of new drugs.
The AI ​​represented by alpha folding is not only a fast and accurate analysis of the three-dimensional structure of some known proteins, but also predicts and discovers protein structures that are not yet known.
However, the biggest advancement in alpha folding is through algorithms to find the three-dimensional shape of the protein. A gene sequence (DNA fragment) only constitutes a long chain of amino acids arranged in a certain sequence. The protein structure cannot be known by gene sequencing alone. This requires alpha folding to determine the three-dimensional structure of the protein by an algorithm.
Theoretically, the ability to analyze and predict the shape and structure of proteins can better determine how other molecules bind to proteins, and it is possible to develop new drugs because they bind to specific proteins in the human body and change. The way proteins work, and they work. In this sense, alpha folding can solve the problem of protein folding, and it is only a new beginning. There is still a long way to go to develop new drugs or to create new ways to treat diseases.
Of course, alpha folding and other AI techniques are mainly used to understand the disease and improve the effect of drug treatment through algorithms. Predicting and analyzing protein folding cannot solve the problem of protein folding. Therefore, at this stage, it is farther and more mature than Alpha Folding, which is to let AI software diagnose diseases such as cancer.
When alpha folding and other AI techniques can diagnose the disease and determine the cause, it is possible to use new therapies, such as gene therapy, to modify and delete the disease-causing genes, thereby making rejuvenation possible, and possibly developing a three-dimensional structure for proteins. New drugs to treat the disease. Now, artificial intelligence interventional medicine and life sciences are just the beginning.
â–¡ Zhang Tiankan (Science Scholar)
Source: Beijing News
Shanghai J.Shine Co.,Ltd , https://www.jshinechem.com