AlphaFold Releases Protein Structures

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TL;DR

AlphaFold has partnered with EMBL to release hundreds of thousands of predicted protein structures. The scale of horrors in Xinjiang is becoming even more apparent. The pentagon retreats from acquisitions reform. PRC companies are acquiring alarming amounts of land globally.

AlphaFold Reveals Many Structures

DeepMind and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have partnered to release structures for 350 thousand proteins from 20 model organisms with 130 million more structures on the way (source). DeepMind’s invention of AlphaFold, a high accuracy protein structure prediction algorithm, followed by this subsequent data release will have a large effect on the sciences. The human genome project revealed the sequence for many proteins, but the function of these proteins remained obscure. AlphaFold now opens up 98.5% of the human exome (protein coding regions of the genome) to structural biology, allowing for much more informed guesses about protein function from structures. The scale of the data release is so large that it will take years for scientists to digest these new structures, but when they do the scientific consequences will be profound. I make a prediction on the record below that AlphaFold will be on track to win a Nobel prize one day:

Bharath Ramsundar @rbhar90

I'll just go ahead and make a prediction that AlphaFold will win a Nobel. Accessible, believable proteomes for humans and other species too, wow. There are a lot of proteins in there we barely understand that we now have a structure for

nature.comDeepMind’s AI predicts structures for a vast trove of proteinsAlphaFold neural network produced a ‘totally transformative’ database of more than 350,000 structures from Homo sapiens and 20 model organisms.

The Vast Scale of Uyghur Detention Further Revealed

Buzzfeed’s latest analysis reveals that 206 million square feet of space has been built to detail muslims in Xinjiang, enough to house 1 million people (source). A new report by Amnesty International reveal that mosques have been systematically demolished in Xinjiang with religious freedom increasingly constrained (source).

A wall painting reads “Stability is a blessing, instability is a calamity,” in Yarkand, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China, on Sept. 20, 2012. Eric Lafforgue / Corbis via Getty Images. Caption and Image from (source).

Retreat from Pentagon Acquisitions Reform

A recent article argues that Michael Brown (head of the Pentagon innovation office) withdrawing his nomination to become Pentagon acquisitions chief (source) is a major failure for military acquisitions reform efforts by the Biden administration.

PRC Companies Aggressively Acquiring Land

A new (report) details that People’s Republic of China (PRC) companies have been aggressively acquiring land globally.

PRC companies have acquired far more overseas land than other multinationals (source).

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Credits

Author: Bharath Ramsundar, Ph.D.
Editor: Sandya Subramanian, (Ph.D.)