{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2020-11-30-alphafold-2/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2020-11-30-alphafold-2/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"human editor","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2020-11-30-alphafold-2","date":"2020-11-30","date_precision":"day","short_title":"AlphaFold 2 solves protein structure prediction at CASP14","deck":null,"takeaway":"AlphaFold 2 achieved a median GDT score of 92.4 at CASP14, accuracy competitive with experimental methods, widely seen as solving the 50-year-old protein folding problem for single chains.","category":"science","category_label":"Science & math","importance":5,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Result confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"AlphaFold: a solution to a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology (DeepMind)","url":"https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/alphafold-a-solution-to-a-50-year-old-grand-challenge-in-biology/","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"deepmind.google"},{"n":2,"title":"Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold (Nature, DOI)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2","type":"paper","group":"primary","domain":"doi.org"},{"n":3,"title":"AlphaFold Protein Structure Database","url":"https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"alphafold.ebi.ac.uk"}],"official":3,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["DeepMind"],"title":"AlphaFold 2 solves protein structure prediction at CASP14","summary":"AlphaFold 2 achieved a median GDT score of 92.4 at CASP14, accuracy competitive with experimental methods, widely seen as solving the 50-year-old protein folding problem for single chains.","key_facts":["CASP14 results announced 30 November 2020","Median GDT of 92.4 across all targets","Nature paper and open-source code published July 2021","AlphaFold Protein Structure Database (with EMBL-EBI) launched July 2021; expanded to 200M+ structures in 2022","Led to the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Hassabis and Jumper"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["biology","protein-folding","alphafold","nobel"],"science":{"field":"biology","subfield":"structural biology","problem":"Protein folding / structure prediction problem","result":"Median GDT_TS of 92.4 across CASP14 targets — accuracy comparable to experimental structures for most single-chain proteins; later used to predict 200M+ structures.","open_since":"1972","ai_system":["AlphaFold 2"],"human_role":"Human-designed system; predictions autonomous in blind assessment","verification":{"key":"peer-review","label":"Peer-reviewed","text":"Blind community assessment (CASP14); peer-reviewed in Nature (2021); widely experimentally corroborated"},"status":"confirmed","shock":"CASP co-founder John Moult said the 50-year-old problem had been 'in a sense solved' — years or decades earlier than most structural biologists expected."},"body_md":"## What happened\n\nUsing an attention-based architecture (Evoformer) trained on known structures, AlphaFold 2 predicted 3D protein structures from amino-acid sequence with near-experimental accuracy.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nThe clearest case of AI producing a major scientific breakthrough; used by millions of researchers and recognized with a Nobel Prize.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2024-10-09-nobel-chemistry-alphafold","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-10-09-nobel-chemistry-alphafold/","date":"2024-10-09","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Nobel Prize in Chemistry for protein design and AlphaFold","deck":null,"takeaway":"Confirmed AI as a tool of first-rank scientific discovery, less than four years after AlphaFold 2.","category":"milestone","category_label":"Milestones","importance":5,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Result confirmed"]},"sources":3,"official":2,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences","Google DeepMind","University of Washington"]},{"id":"2024-05-08-alphafold-3","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-05-08-alphafold-3/","date":"2024-05-08","date_precision":"day","short_title":"AlphaFold 3 predicts structures and interactions of all life's molecules","deck":null,"takeaway":"Moved AI structural biology from single proteins to the molecular interactions that matter for medicine.","category":"science","category_label":"Science & math","importance":4,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Result confirmed"]},"sources":3,"official":3,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["Google DeepMind","Isomorphic Labs"]},{"id":"2018-12-02-alphafold-1-casp13","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2018-12-02-alphafold-1-casp13/","date":"2018-12-02","date_precision":"day","short_title":"AlphaFold (v1) tops the CASP13 protein-structure prediction assessment","deck":null,"takeaway":"Marked AI's entry into a grand challenge of biology and set up the 2020 AlphaFold 2 breakthrough.","category":"science","category_label":"Science & math","importance":4,"confidence":"medium","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Result confirmed"]},"sources":2,"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["DeepMind"]}],"people":[{"id":"demis-hassabis","name":"Demis Hassabis","url":"https://postcutoff.com/person/demis-hassabis/"},{"id":"john-jumper","name":"John Jumper","url":"https://postcutoff.com/person/john-jumper/"}],"posts":[],"videos":[],"models":[],"changes":[{"date":"2026-09-29","type":"edit","text":"Added science block (science & math tab)"},{"date":"2026-09-29","type":"filed","text":"Created"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-09-29","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-09-29","human_review":null,"version":{"date":"2026-10-04"}},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"gemini-4-hydrogen","name":"Gemini 4 Hydrogen","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true}],"short_url":"https://postcutoff.com/s/alphafold-2-solves-protein"}