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What's next for AlphaFold and the AI protein-folding revolution

DeepMind software that can predict the 3D shape of proteins is already changing biology.
  1. Ewen Callaway
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Top view of a Alphafold and cyro-EM model of the human nuclear pore complex shifting between constricted and dilated states

A top-down view of the human nuclear pore complex, the largest molecular machine in human cells. Credit: Agnieszka Obarska-Kosinska

For more than a decade, molecular biologist Martin Beck and his colleagues have been trying to piece together one of the world’s hardest jigsaw puzzles: a detailed model of the largest molecular machine in human cells.

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Nature 604, 234-238 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00997-5

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 25 April 2022: An earlier version of this story erroneously described Gerhard Hummer as a biochemist.

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