Social Networks of Protein Pieces

Computer scientists at Freie Universität Berlin design a method for computer-aided modeling and simulation of large proteins and other biomolecules. No 210/2019 from Jul 09, 2019 Two computational scientists at Freie Universität Berlin are changing the way large proteins modeled inside computers by combining machine learning, an area of artificial intelligence, with statistical physics. The findings were published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA ( https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1901692116 ). "Although biological molecules such as proteins are too small to see with the bare eye, they consist of a large number of atoms," Dr. Simon Olsson, Alexander von Humboldt fellow and lead author on the study, explains - continuing: "this makes it technically challenging study to them to the extent necessary to understand how they work." Gaining insights into how biological molecules, such as proteins, work is critical for several biomedical and biotechnological applications, including improving global food security to crop protection and fighting the rise of multi-resistant pathogens. In their article published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA , the authors describe a procedure to overcome the technical challenges of simulating large proteins. The key insight is realizing proteins are more like social networks than one would immediately expect.