November 12, 2024 – According to a blog post published by Nature yesterday (November 11th), Google’s DeepMind team has open-sourced the code for AlphaFold3, inviting academic researchers to download and optimize the Nobel Prize-winning protein structure modeling tool for non-commercial use.
Compared to its predecessor, AlphaFold3 offers the ability to model proteins in interaction with other molecules. Initially, DeepMind provided access to the tool through a restricted web server, but the release of the code now enables academic researchers to run the model independently and conduct a broader range of experiments.
John Jumper, the head of DeepMind’s AlphaFold team, expressed excitement about how researchers will utilize this tool.
Although only scientists with an academic background can currently request access to the training weights, the openness of the tool undoubtedly presents new possibilities for fields like drug discovery. Meanwhile, competition is heating up as other companies are also developing open-source models based on AlphaFold3.
