What does DeepMind’s protein folding breakthrough mean for beauty?

By Julia Wray | Published: 1-Dec-2020

Now AI has provided a solution to the 50-year-old protein folding problem, how can the cosmetics industry benefit?

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Artificial intelligence group DeepMind has made a major breakthrough in protein folding.

The research company’s latest AI program, AlphaFold, has solved a problem that has bamboozled scientists for 50 years: predicting how proteins fold into 3D shapes.

Proteins are large, complex molecules made up of chains of amino acids and a protein’s function depends on its unique 3D structure.

Figuring out what shapes proteins fold into is known as the ‘protein folding problem’.

The number of ways a protein could theoretically fold before settling into its final 3D structure is described by DeepMind as ‘astronomical’, with 10^300 possible conformations for a typical protein.

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