I can remember the day in middle school I was taught that amino acids were "the building blocks of life." I was fascinated by the idea that our complex form, and the form of other living organisms, was like a tiny Lego set, constructed to make us who we were. Even then, in the early 1980s, researchers had already been trying for almost a decade to figure out how those amino acids told proteins what shape to take. Ever since, with evermore powerful computers and complex algorithms, researchers have applied machine learning techniques to answer the same biological question.
Google 's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) DeepMind has just provided an answer, and it is blowing the minds of researchers. For nearly 50 years, scientists have questioned how proteins know what shape to fold themselves into, and do it repeatedly time after time. In a modeling competition, DeepMind researchers just broke the code, creating a model that translates the amino acid chains into three-dimensional protein structures. To figure out how this could impact medicine (and investing) it's important to understand what this new knowledge will allow scientists to do. Further, what are the downstream effects? Which areas of biological research may be most affected? And which companies stand to gain -- or lose -- the most?
Image source: Getty Images.
For further details see:
Did Google's DeepMind Just Revolutionize Medicine?