How AlphaFold Predicts Protein Structures Using Deep Learning

Abhijat Sarari
AI Innovator From PrismAI
8 min readOct 16, 2024

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Proteins are essential building blocks of life. From carrying oxygen in your blood to fighting off viruses, proteins are behind countless biological processes. However, for proteins to work, they need to fold into specific 3D shapes. They are predicting how a protein folds is important for understanding diseases, creating new medicines, and improving biotechnology. For many years, scientists struggled with accurately predicting protein structures. However, AlphaFold, a groundbreaking tool created by DeepMind, has revolutionized this field using a technique called deep learning.

In this blog post, we will explore what AlphaFold is, how it works, and why it’s important — all explained in simple terms so that even someone with no prior knowledge can understand. We’ll walk you through the science behind AlphaFold, the role deep learning plays in it, and how this innovation is making waves in biology.

Overview of AlphaFold

AlphaFold is an artificial intelligence (AI) system developed by Google’s DeepMind team. It’s specifically designed to predict the 3D structure of proteins, which is crucial for understanding their function and behavior. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that fold into complex shapes, and their structure determines their interactions with other molecules…

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