3 ms·

It allows us to speed up medical research.

• bamboozled 2y ago
  In what field specifically and how ?
  • scotty79 2y ago
    Are you asking what field of science or what industry is interested in predicting how proteins fold? Biotechnology and medicine probably. Pipeline from science to application sometimes takes decades, but I'm sure you can find news of some advancements enabled by finding out short, easy to synthesize proteins that fit particular receptor to block it or that process some simplified enzymes that still process some chemicals of interest more efficiently than natural ones. Finding them would be way harde without ability to predict how a sequence of amino-acids will fold. You'd need to actually try to manufacture them then look at them closely. First thing that came to my mind as a possible application is designing monoclonal antibodies. Here's some paper about something relating to alpha fold and antibodies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10349958/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10349958/
    • RivieraKid 2y ago
      I guess he's asking for specific examples of AlphaFold leading to some tangible real-world benefit.
      • scotty79 2y ago
        Wait a decade then look around.
        • bamboozled 2y ago
          Parent is right, I’ve heard mixed things about alpha folds practical usefulness. As brilliant as what it does is…
  • Meniceses 2y ago
    Are you phishing for something or are you not sure how this actually works? Everyone who is looking for proteins (vacines, medication) need to find the right proteins for different cases. For attaching to something (antibody design), for delivering something (like another protein) or for understanding a disease (why is this protein an issue?). Covid research benefitted from this for example. You can go through papers which reference the alphafold paper to see what it does: https://consensus.app/papers/highly-protein-structure-prediction-alphafold-jumper/dbb40b7fb49c5f0f8ce0ba47ebc58972/ https://consensus.app/papers/highly-protein-structure-predic...
    • bux93 2y ago
      No such thing as a stupid question. It's a question that this paper in Proteomics (which appears to be a legit journal) attempts to answer, at least. https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pmic.202200128 https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/do...
      • Meniceses 2y ago
        I didn't say stupid but sometimes people asking in a way which might not feel legimate / honest.
        • bamboozled 2y ago
          You were making the claim, so I thought you’d have an answer on hand. I’m wondering if it might be you who was commenting in bad faith ?