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AlphaFold Protein Structure Database

alphafold.ebi.ac.uk

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Re: AlphaFold Protein Structure Database

#61
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a correct summary of your statements: Because it -might- make things slightly easier for a state actor with nigh-unlimited resources to enact a doomsday scenario, which they might or might not be pursuing, medical researchers should not publish otherwise helpful research?

I think it's great that the Wuhan institute published all their gain of function research. They even said who paid for it. It's a clear trail back to them, but apparently taking any action to acknowledge that this is a bad thing and something fishy might be going on is a completely politicized issue now that apparently gets as many downvotes as arguing about hot button political topics now. What I'm saying is there s…

It's a bit of a Gish gallop to ignore my point and say something orthogonal that only is weakly related to your original assertion.

Gain of function research is simultaneously concerning (aside from bioweapons use, there is also the possibility of deliberate release) and important (to understand how pathogenesis happens and to better combat future pandemics and bioweapons). It, however, has approximately nothing to do with your assertions that A) China is preparing race-targeted pathogens, or B) that publishing a protein folding database does anything significant to assist China with A.

> ... at least be an open and frank discussion of ...

OK, then you need to be open and frank, rather than engaging in these dishonest argument tactics.

Re: AlphaFold Protein Structure Database

#62
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use the open-source code, and we also have a Colab notebook for that: https://bit.ly/alphafoldcolab More info: https://deepmind.com/blog/article/putting-the-power-of-alpha...

Thanks for that - I can see why my comment was downvoted now, as the the posted article's FAQ lists these links for those who would like to study their favorite sequenced-but-unmodeled protein. I'm glad Alphafold is as open source as it is, and I recognize that it didn't have to be so. I think I was primed for a knee-jerk reaction because when Alphafold's results were announced back in Dec. 2020, with expressions of…

A little addendum (for posterity as this is now an old article post)

• RosettaFold came out in academic paper form as well as open-source github repo slightly prior to AlphaFold. Was AlphaFold's decision to open up motivated by RosettaFold's publishing / opening-up activity? So I feel that the extent of AF's altruism in this (while high) deserves some scrutiny, as perhaps it falls short of the extent that several of us commenting interpreted a couple days ago.

• While RosettaFold allows online execution to the best of their spec, they currently have a backlog queue of ~3000 jobs going back to mid-July. This is telling about the processing power required for folding. AlphaFold has access to a lot of processing power (even if it could ultimately & reasonably end up being on a charge-per-job basis).

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