Early research at DeepMind explored the application of AI, specifically deep learning, to the protein folding problem, a grand challenge in biology.

AlphaFold competed in the 13th Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction (CASP13), achieving significantly higher accuracy than other methods, marking a major breakthrough in the field.

AlphaFold 2 achieved unprecedented accuracy at CASP14, correctly predicting the structure of proteins with accuracy comparable to experimental methods. This result was widely hailed as a revolution in structural biology.

DeepMind and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) released the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database, providing publicly available protein structure predictions for a vast number of proteins, accelerating scientific research.

The AlphaFold Protein Structure Database has been expanded to include nearly all known proteins, transforming research in drug discovery, materials science, and other fields. DeepMind continues to develop and refine AlphaFold.