7 ms·

Additional commentary in Science: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/game-has-changed-ai-triumphs-solving-protein-structures https://www.sciencemag.org/new

Additional commentary in Science: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/game-has-changed-ai-triumphs-solving-protein-structures https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/game-has-changed-ai-... (submitted by furcyd : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25254888 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25254888 ).

ramraj07 6y ago
The most amazing part: > The organizers even worried DeepMind may have been cheating somehow. So Lupas set a special challenge: a membrane protein from a species of archaea, an ancient group of microbes. For 10 years, his research team tried every trick in the book to get an x-ray crystal structure of the protein. “We couldn’t solve it.” > But AlphaFold had no trouble. It returned a detailed image of a three-part protein with two long helical arms in the middle. The model enabled Lupas and his colleagues to make sense of their x-ray data; within half an hour, they had fit their experimental results to AlphaFold’s predicted structure. “It’s almost perfect,” Lupas says. “They could not possibly have cheated on this. I don’t know how they do it.”
- pmastela 6y ago
  Like the old Arthur C. Clark quote goes: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” -- unless it might be cheating in which case throw them a curve ball. Kudos to the DeepMind team for making magic happen.
  - rsiqueira 6y ago
    "A sufficiently advanced Artificial Intelligence would be indistinguishable from God." (Way Of The Future - AI Church)
    - mensetmanusman 6y ago
      That would require the AI to exist outside of time and space.
      - drusepth 6y ago
        Well, this relies on the assumption that a God also inherently exists outside of time and space, which is debatable even among religious scholars.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        I just had a discussion with a friend about this! It's indeed a very difficult question. We ended on the conclusion that God can't possibly exist outside of time and space in the Abrahamic tradition because he precedes the creation of the Universe, but I'm sure there's a twist we missed somewhere.
        lolive 6y ago
        “God is dead” Marilyn Manson.
        da39a3ee 6y ago
        Hm. Nietzsche would seem to be in the lead there.
        lolive 6y ago
        Who?
        015UUZn8aEvW 6y ago
        First as tragedy, then as farce.
        drdeca 6y ago
        I'm confused, because that seems backwards to me? How can He exist within time and space if He created the universe (including time and space)?
        sudosysgen 6y ago
  - 14 6y ago
    I am happy you mention this. I was reading the article and thinking “wow the amount of scientific knowledge these guys need to know to understand what they are doing is way beyond me”. I work in health care and I always talk to clients about all the cool things they witnessed in their life. Cell phones, TVs, microwaves are some obvious ones I like to talk about. I sit and wonder what are the things my generation will get to look back on and say “I was alive when that happened”. I guess for many of us we will talk about how the internet was vs what it surely will be in the future, a shell of its initial glory.
    - ZitchDog 6y ago
      I think mRNA vaccines will be a big one too.
    - aasasd 6y ago
      http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/internet/ http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/internet/
- dekhn 6y ago
  If I interpret this properly, they're saying they used the DM prediction (not an actual model, just a prediction) to do molecular replacement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_replacement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_replacement) which sounds pretty audacious. I see it recently made it into the literature: https://journals.iucr.org/m/issues/2020/06/00/mf5047/index.html https://journals.iucr.org/m/issues/2020/06/00/mf5047/index.h...
- labso 6y ago
  I used to work in scientific HPC and seeing the amount what researchers used computing resources for folding was staggering. Just thinking how much this will speedup the research in coming years is to be seen. I am really hope full.
- jaredmoon 6y ago
  That is amazing, very excited to see how this will effect the biotech industry.
sampo 6y ago
> Additional commentary in Science: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/game-has-changed-ai-triumphs-solving-protein-structures https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/game-has-changed-ai-... And in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03348-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03348-4 And about dozen news organizations listed in "CASP14 in news" column in the conference homepage: https://predictioncenter.org/casp14/ https://predictioncenter.org/casp14/

ramraj07 6y ago

The most amazing part: > The organizers even worried DeepMind may have been cheating somehow. So Lupas set a special challenge: a membrane protein from a species of archaea, an ancient group of microbes. For 10 years, his research team tried every trick in the book to get an x-ray crystal structure of the protein. “We couldn’t solve it.” > But AlphaFold had no trouble. It returned a detailed image of a three-part protein with two long helical arms in the middle. The model enabled Lupas and his colleagues to make sense of their x-ray data; within half an hour, they had fit their experimental results to AlphaFold’s predicted structure. “It’s almost perfect,” Lupas says. “They could not possibly have cheated on this. I don’t know how they do it.”

pmastela 6y ago
Like the old Arthur C. Clark quote goes: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” -- unless it might be cheating in which case throw them a curve ball. Kudos to the DeepMind team for making magic happen.
- rsiqueira 6y ago
  "A sufficiently advanced Artificial Intelligence would be indistinguishable from God." (Way Of The Future - AI Church)
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    That would require the AI to exist outside of time and space.
    - drusepth 6y ago
      Well, this relies on the assumption that a God also inherently exists outside of time and space, which is debatable even among religious scholars.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        I just had a discussion with a friend about this! It's indeed a very difficult question. We ended on the conclusion that God can't possibly exist outside of time and space in the Abrahamic tradition because he precedes the creation of the Universe, but I'm sure there's a twist we missed somewhere.
        lolive 6y ago
        “God is dead” Marilyn Manson.
        da39a3ee 6y ago
        Hm. Nietzsche would seem to be in the lead there.
        lolive 6y ago
        Who?
        015UUZn8aEvW 6y ago
        First as tragedy, then as farce.
        drdeca 6y ago
        I'm confused, because that seems backwards to me? How can He exist within time and space if He created the universe (including time and space)?
        sudosysgen 6y ago
- 14 6y ago
  I am happy you mention this. I was reading the article and thinking “wow the amount of scientific knowledge these guys need to know to understand what they are doing is way beyond me”. I work in health care and I always talk to clients about all the cool things they witnessed in their life. Cell phones, TVs, microwaves are some obvious ones I like to talk about. I sit and wonder what are the things my generation will get to look back on and say “I was alive when that happened”. I guess for many of us we will talk about how the internet was vs what it surely will be in the future, a shell of its initial glory.
  - ZitchDog 6y ago
    I think mRNA vaccines will be a big one too.
  - aasasd 6y ago
    http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/internet/ http://www.poorlydrawnlines.com/comic/internet/
dekhn 6y ago
If I interpret this properly, they're saying they used the DM prediction (not an actual model, just a prediction) to do molecular replacement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_replacement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_replacement) which sounds pretty audacious. I see it recently made it into the literature: https://journals.iucr.org/m/issues/2020/06/00/mf5047/index.html https://journals.iucr.org/m/issues/2020/06/00/mf5047/index.h...
labso 6y ago
I used to work in scientific HPC and seeing the amount what researchers used computing resources for folding was staggering. Just thinking how much this will speedup the research in coming years is to be seen. I am really hope full.
jaredmoon 6y ago
That is amazing, very excited to see how this will effect the biotech industry.

sampo 6y ago

> Additional commentary in Science: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/game-has-changed-ai-triumphs-solving-protein-structures https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/game-has-changed-ai-... And in Nature: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03348-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03348-4 And about dozen news organizations listed in "CASP14 in news" column in the conference homepage: https://predictioncenter.org/casp14/ https://predictioncenter.org/casp14/