'They have shown that this is not some im­pos­si­ble thing': Aca­d­e­m­ic lab copies Google’s big bi­o­log­i­cal break­through

When Demis Has­s­abis, CEO of Google’s AI out­fit Deep­Mind, an­nounced last year that they had cracked one of the tough­est puz­zles in bi­ol­o­gy — suc­cess­ful­ly pre­dict­ing a pro­tein’s shape from its amino acid se­quence — Minkyung Baek watched with a cu­ri­ous mix­ture of dread and ex­cite­ment.

“It felt like I just lost my job,” said Baek, a post­doc at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton’s In­sti­tute for Pro­tein De­sign.

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