Latest / Deep End Era. Engineering with Sankalp
A Very Confident Drawing: Protein Structure Prediction and Design
Fictional biochemist Marguerite Oyelaran and offshore production chemist Lars Holmgaard want a designed protein that stops mineral scale. Her screen shows a predicted structure nobody has ever measured, and Lars asks the episode's question: is it real, or a very confident drawing? In episode one hundred and sixty nine we trace the protein folding problem from Anfinsen's experiments and Levinthal's paradox through CASP, co-evolution and AlphaFold 2's 2020 breakthrough, then AlphaFold 3, generative design with RFdiffusion and ProteinMPNN, and protein language models. We learn to read confidence…
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