How Machine learning can help read the language of life
The language of life is DNA, and the good and bad things that happened to our forefathers are recorded in our DNA. Any organism, including the human body, receives instructions for producing proteins from DNA. Proteins are microscopic machines that perform various vital functions, from warding off disease to assisting you in acing a forthcoming exam at school. But we don't understand what such a third of the proteins produced by all species accomplish. It's almost as if we're in a bustling factory with all these amazing tools, but we have no real notion of what's happening. Our knowledge of machine learning is focused on how these tools work and how we can use them. These annotations, which outnumber the database's growth during the previous ten years, will help the 2.5 million life scientists worldwide find novel antibodies, proteins, nutrients, and treatments. Recently, DeepMind demonstrated how well AlphaFold could predict the form of protein machinery. Alt...