The open map of every protein
The problem Dr. Su Datt Lam’s team faced
Figuring out a protein's 3D shape used to take months of lab work per protein — and shape determines function, which determines drugs. For underfunded diseases like melioidosis, a bacterial "silent killer" claiming around 90,000 lives a year mostly in Southeast Asia, that slowness meant treatments stalled for lack of basic structural knowledge.
What the project does about it
AlphaFold predicts a protein's 3D structure from its amino-acid sequence in seconds, at accuracy rivaling lab experiments. The predictions are published in a free searchable database of more than 200 million structures covering nearly every known protein.
Who this helped
Dr. Su Datt Lam’s team, National University of Malaysia.