Thread by @valerio_pergola

In the recent years @DeepMind has been working on Protein Folding and thanks to their deep learning architecture AlphaFold they already managed to predict millions of proteins, accelerating the making of new protein-based drugs for fighting diseases.  🧵

#DeepMind #AlphaFold #AI

When mutated, normal cells might become cancerous. AlphaFold may determine how a mutation can alter the structure, and hence the function, of the proteins encoded by these genes. Understanding how mutations influence their structure can be key to developing new medical treatments

AlphaFold, is able to predict the structure of the protein in which a mutation occurs, see where that mutation is, and how the mutated protein interacts with other molecules, and ultimately get an idea about the mechanism, or why that mutation causes a problem for that cell