AlphaFold has revealed millions of intricate 3D protein structures, and is helping scientists understand how life’s molecules interact.
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13th March 2016
AlphaGo’s success proves AI’s readiness to tackle protein folding
DeepMind’s AlphaGo program defeats legendary Go player Lee Sae Dol in a challenge match in Seoul. This watershed moment demonstrated that DeepMind’s AI techniques were potentially advanced enough to be applied to scientific challenges. A small team is established to start working on protein structure prediction.
2nd December 2018
AlphaFold places first at CASP13
AlphaFold’s performance is benchmarked in the 13th Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction (CASP13), placing first in the rankings (under entry A7D). The methods are subsequently published in the scientific journal Nature. The team is expanded, and work begins on an innovative new system.
30th November 2020
AlphaFold is recognised as a solution to the protein folding problem at CASP14
AlphaFold2 wins CASP14 by a huge margin and is recognised as a solution to the 50-year-old “protein folding problem” by the organisers of CASP after predicting structures down to atomic accuracy with a median error (RMSD_95) of less than 1 Angstrom - 3 times more accurate than the next best system and comparable to experimental methods.
15th July 2021
AlphaFold’s methodology is published in Nature
Nature publishes AlphaFold’s detailed methodology in the paper “Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold” and DeepMind open sources the code along with 60 pages of supplemental information. To-date, the paper has been cited over 40,000 times in scientific journals.
22nd July 2021
We launch the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database with EMBL-EB
A week later, Nature publishes a second DeepMind paper containing the structure predictions of the entire human proteome. In close collaboration with the European Bioinformatics Institute at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL-EBI), DeepMind launches the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database (AFDB) to give the scientific community free of charge and open access to the human proteome along with another 20 model organisms - over 350,000 structures in total.
28th July 2022
We share the structures of over 200 million proteins with the research community
In partnership with EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), DeepMind releases the predicted structures for nearly all catalogued proteins known to science, expanding the AFDB to over 200 million structures.
8th May 2024
AlphaFold 3 and AlphaFold Server are launched
Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs introduce AlphaFold 3, which predicts the structure and interactions of all of life’s molecules. At the same time, Google DeepMind launches AlphaFold Server, a platform that provides scientists free access to AF3 structure prediction capabilities for non-commercial research.
9th October 2024
AlphaFold is recognised by the Nobel Committee
Demis Hassabis and John Jumper are co-awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on AlphaFold, alongside David Baker for his work on computational protein design.
November 2025
AlphaFold is a global research tool
AlphaFold is being used by over 3 million researchers from over 190 countries around the world, tackling problems such as antimicrobial resistance, crop resilience and heart disease.
What took us months and years to do, AlphaFold was able to do in a weekend.
Over 2 million researchers in over 190 countries are using the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database to inform their research.
Hundreds of millions
Research years saved by AlphaFold database structures.
Over 1 million
Users in low and middle income countries.
Over 30%
Of papers citing AlphaFold are related to the study of disease.
AlphaFold has allowed us to take our project to the next level, from a fundamental science stage to the preclinical and clinical development stage.
Professor Matthew Higgins
Biochemist
AlphaFold Server
Powered by AlphaFold 3 — AlphaFold Server predicts how proteins will interact with other molecules throughout cells.
AlphaFold Protein Structure Database
View over 200 million protein structure predictions to support your research.
AlphaFold Server
AlphaFold Server predicts how proteins will interact with other molecules throughout cells.
AlphaFold 3
Access the AlphaFold 3 model code and weights for academic use.