Our malaria vaccine work highlighted by AlphaFold

alphafold

“Matt Higgins and his team of researchers at the University of Oxford had a problem”, say Time magazine, and AlphaFold2 helped us to solve it.

It was a pleasure to appear at the press conference in which AlphaFold2 announced a massive database containing predictions of protein structures for all sequenced organisms. We were there to describe how AlphaFold2, combined with experimental data, allowed us to understand the malaria transmission-blocking antibody candidate Pfs48/45.

July 2022

This work is described in our preprint:

Ko, K.T., Lennartz, F., Mekhaiel, D., Guloglu, B., Marini, A., Deuker, D.J., Long, C.A., Jore, M.M., Miura, M., Biswas, S. and Higgins, M.K. (2022) Structure of the malaria vaccine candidate Pfs48/45 and its recognition by transmission blocking antibodies. Nature Communications 13 5603

And you can find the press coverage in The Guardian, New Scientist, The Telegraph, Time magazine and many other outlets:

https://www.ft.com/content/6a088953-66d7-48db-b61c-79005a0a351a

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/28/deepmind-uncovers-structure-of-200m-proteins-in-scientific-leap-forward

https://time.com/6201423/deepmind-alphafold-proteins/

https://institutions.newscientist.com/article/2330866-deepminds-protein-folding-ai-cracks-biologys-biggest-problem/

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/28/protein-universe-revealed-ai-could-help-cure-parkinsons/