The
artificial intelligence
that predicts the
3D structure of proteins
is the discovery of the year according to Science. Already mentioned in the top ten of 2020, this time it has managed to climb the rankings thanks to the incredible developments in recent months that have led software to predict interactions between proteins: a turning point in biomedical research that has convinced both the editors of the magazine. that its readers polled online, beating other major scientific findings such as
anti-Covid pills
and
earthquakes on Mars
.
Prediction of protein structure represents "a major breakthrough on two fronts," says Science Director Holden Thorp. "First of all, it solves a scientific problem that had been resisting for 50 years. Then it is a revolutionary technique which, like Crispr or cryoelectronic microscopy, will give a strong acceleration to scientific discoveries".
Proteins are the 'building blocks' of life and their functions (crucial for any biological process) are directly related to their three-dimensional shape. Before artificial intelligence, determining the structure of a protein was an extremely time-consuming, expensive and laborious task. The turning point came with two studies published last summer by Nature and Science. In the first, led by David Baker of the University of Washington, the
RoseTTAFold
artificial intelligence program
succeeded in solving the structure of hundreds of proteins known to be commonly used drug targets. The following week, the British firm DeepMind of Google published a study in which it managed to do the same on 350.000 human proteins (44% of those known in our organism).
The even more important element underlined by Science is that both research groups have shared their results with the scientific community, allowing other scientists to speed up their research as well.
For 2021, the journal Science also reports 9 other important scientific discoveries: the development of anti-Covid pills, the study of
earthquakes on Mars
, the
recovery of ancient human DNA from the soil
, the
new measurements of muons
, the first
applications of Crispr on the human body
, the
use of psychedelics against post-traumatic stress disorder
, the development of
artificial antibodies against infections
, advances in
nuclear fusion
and in the study of
embryonic development
.
