On 30 November 2020 the organisers of CASP14, the biennial competition for predicting protein structures, announced that DeepMind's artificial intelligence system AlphaFold 2 had predicted the three-dimensional shapes of proteins with an accuracy close to that of laboratory experiments, solving a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology. A protein's function depends on how its chain of amino acids folds. In 2021 DeepMind released predicted structures of nearly all human proteins, and in 2022 over 200 million, for free. The system is used in drug research and basic biology. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with David Baker.
Before and after
- 3 November 20202020 United States presidential election
- 13 November 2020Western Saharan clashes (2020–present)
- 23 November 2020Launch of Chang'e 5
- 25 November 2020Death of Diego Maradona
- 30 November 2020AlphaFold solves the protein-folding problem
- 2 December 2020Death of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
- 2 December 2020The first mRNA vaccine is authorised
- from 9 December 2020 to 4 February 2021Premiere of True Beauty
- 20212021 Russian protests
More in Science & technology
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The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 21st century.