Protein structure prediction now easier, faster.

Proteins are the minions of life, working alone or together to build, manage, fuel, protect, and eventually destroy cells. Last year, in a result hailed as a turning point, computational biologists showed that artificial intelligence (AI) could accurately predict a complex structure based on the protein9s string of amino acids. A new team has now made AI-based structure prediction more powerful and accessible. Their method works on not just simple proteins, but also complexes of proteins, and its creators have made their computer code freely available. In a recent test of the method, it made short work of more than 4500 protein sequences submitted by outside researchers. And experts expect the newly released code will inspire even better, faster approaches to understanding proteins.