And the Biggest Scientific Breakthrough of 2021 Is... (science.org) 29
Slashdot reader sciencehabit quotes Science magazine:
In his 1972 Nobel Prize acceptance speech, American biochemist Christian Anfinsen laid out a vision: One day it would be possible, he said, to predict the 3D structure of any protein merely from its sequence of amino acid building blocks. With hundreds of thousands of proteins in the human body alone, such an advance would have vast applications, offering insights into basic biology and revealing promising new drug targets. Now, after nearly 50 years, researchers have shown that artificial intelligence (AI)-driven software can churn out accurate protein structures by the thousands—an advance that realizes Anfinsen's dream and is Science's 2021 Breakthrough of the Year.
Protein structures could once be determined only through painstaking lab analyses. But they can now be calculated, quickly, for tens of thousands of proteins, and for complexes of interacting proteins. "This is a sea change for structural biology," says Gaetano Montelione, a structural biologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. David Baker, a University of Washington, Seattle, computational biochemist who led one of the prediction projects, adds that with the bounty of readily available structures, "All areas of computational and molecular biology will be transformed."
Protein structures could once be determined only through painstaking lab analyses. But they can now be calculated, quickly, for tens of thousands of proteins, and for complexes of interacting proteins. "This is a sea change for structural biology," says Gaetano Montelione, a structural biologist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. David Baker, a University of Washington, Seattle, computational biochemist who led one of the prediction projects, adds that with the bounty of readily available structures, "All areas of computational and molecular biology will be transformed."
Theoretical versus empirical. (Score:1)
I think what was being proposed was a theoretical solution to the problem. Given some sequence of amino acids, can we theoretically calculate the fold. Someone more apt in bioinformatics can likely China in on if this is even believed to be possible.
Having an AI churn this out is little different than Fold-it with the latter likely being more inexpensive in the sense people use their own cycles. more so, I would like to see a comparison of human solutions with algorithmic help compared to pure AI and I susp
Re: Theoretical versus empirical. (Score:3)
Chime in... not China... shit
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In the real world, the answer is "no". The difficulty is left-handed versus right-handed structures, and evolved reinforcement of them. A purely numerical or theoretical analysis cannot show which historical option was selected and is reinforced, not necessarily preferred, by evolutionary development.
Also, frankly, a lot of genetic analysis has been flat-out wrong. I got a good look at human genome work as it was originially developed, and a lot of it was so very bad that the sequences being generated for a
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You're a total clown who has no idea what he's talking about.
Thank you for the enlightening analysis.
Re: Ivermectin and bleach (Score:2)
Someone get Donald Trump, M.D., Ph.D., RN, GED, a Nobel.
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O deserves one for the Iran nuclear deal
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He has his own personal Matrix in his head. Walls are decorated with awards there.
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Could we already put this canard to rest? Trump did not say "bleach" per se. There was at the time a serious proposed therapy that used a hydrogen peroxide solution, which is a bleaching agent, to cleanse the lungs.
That's great, stop prions now. (Score:2)
Prions and PrP-like proteins (alpha synucleoid inclusions) are fucking terrifying. Please make them go away.
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They're also really durable. It can take 900 degrees, Fahrenheit, for *hours*, to be sure of denaturing such simple proteins.
Re:That's great, stop prions now. (Score:4, Informative)
They're also really durable. It can take 900 degrees, Fahrenheit, for *hours*, to be sure of denaturing such simple proteins.
Your numbers [memphis.edu] may be off by a bit. And a bit more [scientificamerican.com] about why prions are such pains in the ass to get rid of.
And for those who might be curious, this is what your brain looks like [imgur.com] once prions get involved.
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I was looking at https://dwr.virginia.gov/wildl... [virginia.gov], which cited "900 degrees Fahrenheit for several hours", which was the first Google hit and a state agency. I can quite easily believe that different organizations publish different standards. 900 degrees Fahrenheit is more the "incineration" treatment, rather than trying to keep expensive surgical instruments intact for safe reuse.
SARS-COV-2 was yesterday's technology (Score:2)
Today all we can do is add a spike protein to a bat virus, toss in a Furin cleavage site and hope for the best.
But tomorrow we will be able to design the next virus from scratch. Just to see what happens, pure research. Oh what fun.
I do not think that there is any organic molecule that can survive 900F, most plastics melt long before that. Let alone a complex protein.
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You should look up vids of Britain responding to BSE. It is straight out of a horror movie, with the flame throwers, open pits burning the carcasses... digging out the contaminated soil.
In my evil scientist mode, I could picture prions as a biological agent, plunging the world into madness.
The effects would be straight out of HP Lovecraft, with a nuking of the planet to hopefully stop the spread.
Prions are no joke.
We need to get ahead of the game (GoF) (Score:2)
In order to understand how a truly evil prion would behave we need to use our new tools to build artificial super-prions in the lab. Then we can study them.
What could possibly go wrong?
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And for those who might be curious, this is what your brain looks like once prions get involved.
Next time you're having trouble sleeping, this will really cement your insomnia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It's a different prion disease from CJD. Turns out there's more than one!
Distributed computing (Score:2)
I am a proud contributor to folding at home and rosetta at home. Via my computer. I see David Baker from R@H mentioned. Glad to have been of help. :)
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An old Linux PC with a quad core I7 and a GTX 970. The 970 was used only for folding. :)
Fuck cookies! (Score:3)
That stupid-ass science.org site REFUSES to function AT ALL without cookies enabled. Fuck 'em and their bullshit tracking.
TikTok filters (Score:2)
Judging by the rapidity of their adoption.