SCItations

Last month I wrote about the wonders and perils of the artificial intelligence program that predicts 3D protein structures, AlphaFold2. As an ion channel enthusiast , I naturally wanted to know how AlphaFold2 performs at predicting the structures of proteins embedded in cell membranes. When I search PubMed for articles that mention both "AlphaFold" and "ion channel" I only get 34 hits. This surprised me, given the hype and the general paranoia around AI replacing humanity. If we use these search results as a proxy for the state of the ion channel protein structure prediction field, I'd say the juice is still in the coconut. I wanted to know how well AF2 would do at predicting an ion channel protein structure, so I asked it to generate the structure of Kv2.1, a voltage-gated potassium ion channel that I studied during graduate school. Kv2.1 is a pretty important protein. It regulates neuron firing throughout the brain and body where it helps us learn new stuff, ...