AlphaFold: a solution to a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology
Two years ago, after DeepMind submitted its first set of predictions to CASP (Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction), Mohammed AlQuraishi, an expert in the field, asked, &quot;What just happened?&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;moalquraishi.wordpress.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;09&#x2F;alphafold-casp13-what-just-happened&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;moalquraishi.wordpress.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;12&#x2F;09&#x2F;alphafold-casp...</a><p>Now that the problem of static protein structure prediction has been <i>solved</i> (prediction errors are below the threshold that is considered acceptable in experimental measurements), we can confidently answer AlQuraishi&#x27;s question:<p>Protein Folding just had its &quot;ImageNet moment.&quot;<p>In hindsight, AlphaFold v1 represented for protein structure prediction in 2018 what AlexNet represented for visual recognition in 2012.