[HN Gopher] AlphaFold developers win $3M breakthrough prize
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AlphaFold developers win $3M breakthrough prize
Author : dopu
Score : 146 points
Date : 2022-09-22 17:46 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nature.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nature.com)
| hanniabu wrote:
| Does this solve protein folding?
| [deleted]
| keepquestioning wrote:
| What's the next AlphaFold? I want to get in early
| dekhn wrote:
| I expect them to get the Nobel prize in Chemistry in about two-
| three weeks.
| nnm wrote:
| From my chat with friends who work in the area of drug design,
| AlphaFold is accurate for overall structure, but is not that
| accurate for predicting structure around interaction locations.
| amrrs wrote:
| Isn't that quite a big claim? My question, Is that work with
| Alphafold that significant that it warrants the eyes of Nobel
| committee? Genuinely curious.
| dhdc wrote:
| The joke is that the Nobel prize in chemistry is often
| awarded to non-chemists.
| ISL wrote:
| It could also draw the attention of the Physics Nobel
| committee. Oodles of physicists have been working on the
| folding inverse-problem for decades.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| In my opinion, absolutely. The "protein folding problem" has
| been widely regarded as one of the biggest challenges in
| molecular biology for over half a century, and Alphafold has
| effectively solved it. I would put this up there with Sanger
| winning the prize for discovering how to sequence DNA and
| Kary Mullis for inventing PCR... this will have widespread
| implications for allowing us to understand, and even design
| proteins.
| dekhn wrote:
| But they didn't solve the protein folding problem. They
| solved a simpler problem, protein structure prediction.
|
| What is important about their discovery is that we now know
| for certain that a judicious combination of expensive-to-
| obtain structure information, and easy-to-obtain protein
| sequence relationships can be used to build a generalized
| protein structure predictor (it can predict structures with
| no prior example of a fold, although there are limits)...
| and you don't have solve the general folding problem to do
| it. You do not need to know the path, to get to the
| destination!
|
| Many of us in the field expected this to be true but there
| wasn't any really good example to point to that was widely
| accepted by the community. And in the ~year or so since
| this was demonstrated, the community has already found a
| wide range of uses for this that have validated the
| structure predictions and demonstrated their utility- using
| open codes and models.
| gone35 wrote:
| Not with recent results in Nature I believe reporting glaring
| mispredictions. Lots of promotion notwithstanding, AlphaFold
| may not be usable yet.
| mxwsn wrote:
| The Nobel committee usually prefers to wait and evaluate
| longer-term impact, so I'd be quite surprised. CRISPR was
| obviously revolutionary in 2013 (imo, more than alphafold), and
| won the Nobel in 2020.
| echelon wrote:
| CRISPR is a revolutionary tool.
|
| AlphaFold doesn't solve folding. It makes metaheuristic
| guesses without writing a bunch of quantum chemistry,
| statistical physics, thermodyanamics, and topology maths /
| algorithms.
|
| I don't mean to downplay AlphaFold, but we haven't solved
| protein folding yet. This press is really getting ahead of
| itself.
| epvgwwqe wrote:
| Seems pretty doubtful. Is there any high impact scientific
| discovery that AlphaFold directly enabled at this point?
| dekhn wrote:
| The Nobel Prize does not only award scientists for enabling
| high impact discoveries, but occasionally to people who make
| a major discovery that has no immediate impact. There is
| literature dribbling out from folks using AlphaFold models,
| but that's not what they would be awarding here. This was a
| long-standing problem that was convincingly solved.
| epvgwwqe wrote:
| If there is precedent for that, then sure they could win.
| GeorgeJIrwin wrote:
| When will we see the result of this breakthrough in our daily
| life?
|
| The article mentions:
|
| > So far, the data have been harnessed to tackle problems ranging
| from antibiotic resistance to crop resilience.
|
| Is any of them is about to be used in our daily life and solve a
| major problem?
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Except the article is wrong. "Tackle" is doing a lot of
| work...it doesn't actually mean anything in this case, as
| AlphaFold has not been shown to help in antibiotic resistance
| (compounds found using it haven't even been tested in the real
| world), and has not increased crop resilience in any
| independent peer reviewed studies or in the real world. It's
| all still hype at this point.
| aardvarkr wrote:
| "It's all still hype at this point" implies this is vaporware
| when it's a real thing that has solved one of the biggest
| roadblocks in microbiology. Your claim is analogous to
| lithium batteries, invented in 1976, taking 25+ years before
| completely DOMINATING the modern battery market. Science
| takes time to go from the research stage to mass market
| adoption. Level set your expectations.
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| You picked a convenient analogy. No one knew whether
| lithium batteries were going to be as useful as they were.
| Much additional testing and work was necessary to prove it.
| It COULD have failed. Same with Alpha Fold. Abandon your
| expectations.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Denis Hassabis has talked about the next evolution of AlphaFold
| to be developed (and what the team is working on): predicting
| interactions between proteins. If they are successful (which I
| really hope they will be as a person with both chronic illness
| and relatives and friends with illnesses), I can't think of any
| drug research where it won't accerelate the drug development.
| bismuthcrystal wrote:
| Logic compels us to conclude that we will see some results of
| this on our daily lives and it will become the solution to some
| "problems".
|
| Problem is, our major problems are mostly social. Biologists
| will sell you the story that this is a breakthrough that will
| empower us to improve crop yield and solve world hunger. But we
| all know we could already have solved it. Turns out the US
| rather spend billions to build another aircraft carrier instead
| of develop Africa's farm machinery industry. It is sad. But it
| is the world.
| krastanov wrote:
| More resilient crops and reliable antibiotics is "daily life"
| and "major problem".
| Royi wrote:
| I wonder what people, in 100 years, would say about our era.
|
| One might research, work hard and solve a problem that might
| change the course of development of a major field and win a
| recognition by $3M while someone which fills few numbers on a
| lottery ticket may earn 1-2 folds more.
|
| I wish the system would give this kind of efforts and stories a
| bigger exposure, recognition and compensation.
|
| Edit: The idea was about the prize amount, not those specific
| people. It wasn't the best choice, but the idea was that even as
| a statement, prizes for scientific achievements should be higher
| so they will be an extreme to all people to recognize and strive
| for. I guess one could find a better analogy than what I had in
| mind.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| People are generally compensated for providing goods/services
| people get value out of. I doubt in 100 years this will be an
| alien concept.
| derac wrote:
| The lottery isn't comparable, first of all it's a money raising
| scheme. I'm sure the alphafold team is well compensated. Almost
| certainly making high 6 figures. Alphafold got a massive amount
| of well-deserved coverage as well.
| Drakim wrote:
| Your point is good but the direction of your contempt is
| misplaced. Lottery winners accounts for a tiny fraction of
| people who have unearned and undeserved wealth, and in terms of
| how many people they screwed over to get to riches, they are
| like angels in comparison to other rich people.
| random314 wrote:
| Alice walton comes to mind
|
| https://www.mic.com/articles/79039/the-untold-story-of-
| alice...
|
| And let's not talk about the Sacklers
| Royi wrote:
| I agree with you. I should have made a better choice than
| lottery. My intention was that the needle which sets the
| reward for research, long life work pursuing the solution of
| a problem should move to the right and get those people more.
|
| $3M isn't enough in our days to recognize remarkable work in
| my opinion. Yes, one of them made a lot of money, but is it
| true for all the past winners of this prize?
| nightski wrote:
| I'm curious, what would be the right amount in your
| opinion? How would you value it?
| nend wrote:
| The great wall of china was partially funded by lotteries. I
| don't think anyone from the future is going to have anything to
| say about today's lotteries. Lotteries will probably still be
| popular in a hundred years.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Demis Hassabis made tens, if not hundreds of millions of
| dollars in the Deep Mind acquisition. I'm sure most people
| would consider that to be adequate compensation.
|
| If anything, the lesson is that if you care about making lots
| of money from your research (not everybody does), start a
| company. And it's easier for academics to start companies today
| than in any other era.
| Royi wrote:
| I agree, my wording was not perfect.
|
| My point was that such a prize should be backed with more
| money. Even for the sake of a statement what we consider to
| be important.
|
| So the emphasize was about the enormous ratio between the two
| and not about lottery being wrong (Moreover it pays for
| itself).
| [deleted]
| modeless wrote:
| The people who worked on AlphaFold were (and are) compensated
| very well. Maybe they didn't win the lottery, but they probably
| make between 10 and 40 times the median income. And they have
| received a lot of recognition and exposure, I'd say probably
| the right amount for the achievement. I'm sure there are issues
| of this type in the world, but in this case I don't really see
| a problem.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Quite funny to me that:
|
| - for the first time, there isn't mountains and mountains of
| trolling in an Alphafold thread and the comments are _very_ quiet
|
| - the only reason why is a new account tried doing the trolling
|
| - comment is instadead without any manual flagging
|
| - but, people are afraid to post given the one try in 3 hours is
| dead
| mellosouls wrote:
| Full list:
|
| https://breakthroughprize.org/News/73
| 420official wrote:
| > ... were recognized for creating the tool that has predicted
| the 3D structures of almost every known protein on the planet.
|
| I wonder if relying on a tool that doesn't 100% accurately
| represent reality could have a negative effect on future research
| [deleted]
| flobosg wrote:
| > that doesn't 100% accurately represent reality
|
| It could be argued that this is the case of every scientific
| tool ever used.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Current methods are not 100% accurate either. No study is 100%.
|
| Honestly the only field that has a P value that comes close to
| 100% is physics. Even medicine which is far more rigorous than
| most fields fails quite often in phase 3 trials after having
| vetted it in phase 2.
| tedsanders wrote:
| Even physics is nowhere close to "100% accurate." Most fields
| of physics approximate many body problems that are infeasible
| to compute, let alone fully specify. E.g. Astrophysics, solid
| state physics, nuclear physics, etc. Practitioners regularly
| use empirically measured parameters like cross-sectional
| scattering areas, and those parameters are updated and
| narrowed over time.
| dekhn wrote:
| The predictions made by AlphaFold are now indistinguishable
| from experimental data collection error so folks aren't super
| concerned. Anyway structures are typically qualititaive tools
| useful for thinking about proteins, rather than direct targets
| of computational predictions (hasn't stopped people from
| trying).
| stainablesteel wrote:
| its a decent enough start because scaling the instrumentation-
| route of doing this is a lot slower than the ML approach, it
| can only improve
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