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Hey, shortwave, shortwave,

with producer Burley McCoy. What's up Burley? Hey Emily

Hello what do you have for us today? Okay so Emily today I want to dig into how AI has

shaken up the field of protein science as in the fundamental building blocks of life

proteins. I've heard of them. Yeah I mean this is like what you studied back in your

scientist days. Yes yes I love proteins. Oh, we love that you love them. How has

AI moved the needle in this field though? Well, scientists have used it to dig into a problem that

protein scientists have struggled with for more than 60 years and that is

what do these building blocks of which there are millions look like like their

shape like their shape yeah exactly And why is that so important?

Well, the ability of a protein to do its specific job, so like carry oxygen through your body or

turn light into sugar, that relies wholly on its unique complicated shape.

So to understand how it works, you need to know its shape.

But why can't scientists just run an experiment to determine the shape?

They can for some proteins, but those experiments can take years and

years and Emily. That's because a scientist essentially needs to take the

equivalent of a molecular photo of the protein to map its complicated shape. But getting the protein to cooperate

...