Part 4/9:
Enter John Moult and his audacious CASP (Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction) competition, aimed at leveraging computational modeling to predict protein structures. However, it wasn't until Demis Hassabis and his AI company DeepMind stepped into the fray that significant progress began to materialize. Leveraging the capabilities of artificial intelligence, DeepMind sought to create AlphaFold, an AI system that could predict protein structures with remarkable accuracy.
Initially, AlphaFold's early version, AlphaFold 1, set the stage for subsequent iterations, albeit with limited success. As researchers refined their algorithms and honed their tools, it became evident that the complexity of biology required deeper insights into both evolution and structure.