The building blocks of life, called amino acids, make proteins needed by our cells to function properly. There are about 200 million known proteins of different shapes at present. But only a fraction of them have been unfolded to fully understand how they work. Finding out the shape of just one protein needs expensive equipment and years of hard work. And if we add other species including viruses, the number of proteins may well run into billions. To date, the 3D shape of a fraction of two million proteins is known. Researchers have long struggled in figuring out the network of millions of interactions between the molecules and predict the shape of the proteins. And their 3D shape including those of cancer and COVID-19, determines their function. Knowing their true shape and function would help evolve appropriate medicines.

After a year of gloom, there is good news. Where humans have failed, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has succeeded in providing a shot in....