Proteins – the building blocks of life
Proteins underpin every biological process, in every living thing.
Made from long chains of amino acids, each has a unique complex 3D structure. But figuring out just one of these can take several years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars. In 2020, AlphaFold solved this problem, with the ability to predict protein structures in minutes, to a remarkable degree of accuracy.
That’s helping researchers understand what individual proteins do and how they interact with other molecules. So valuable time and resources can be redirected into advancing research that could help solve society’s biggest medical and environmental challenges.