AlphaFold transforms biology for millions around the world

Open sourcing over 200 million protein structures to help researchers solve countless problems

Big data in biology leads to discoveries that can benefit humankind. That’s the core belief at EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), and what its scientists have proven to be true ever since its founding at the Wellcome Genome Campus in Hinxton, UK, in 1994.

Part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, the institute is an intergovernmental research organization funded by over 20 member states. Its data span genomics, proteins, small molecules, data models and much more.

As a champion of open data in the life sciences, EMBL-EBI was a natural partner for DeepMind to host the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database, providing free access to protein structure predictions to scientists globally.

After launching in 2021 with around 365,000 structure predictions, the database now contains more than 200m predictions, covering nearly all cataloged proteins known to science and increasing our understanding of biology by orders of magnitude.

Links and further reading: 

• Access the AlphaFold Database
• Read EMBL-EBI’s white paper on the potential impacts of the AlphaFold Database
• Read Professor Dame Janet Thornton’s blog post on the importance of the protein folding problem