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Chapter 100 Artificial Intelligence Accurately Predicts Protein Structure (39)

"This time I plan to carry out three projects at the same time, but two of them will be handed over to you. Although the other is also related to biology, it mainly needs to be researched by people in the field of artificial intelligence." Zhou Ming and the other end of the phone Yi Huaqing talked about the research project he was planning to carry out this time.

Previously, Zhou Ming came one project at a time. This time, he planned to carry out three projects at the same time.

With the improvement of Zhou Ming's own social influence and the gradual growth of the company, he will also start to accelerate the pace of biological science development. This is the purpose of Zhou Ming's establishment of the company at the beginning.

"Artificial intelligence?" Yi Huaqing was confused on the other end of the phone. Their company did a good job in researching water pollution, so how could it involve artificial intelligence?

Thinking of this, Yi Huaqing remembered that Zhou Ming had indeed published a paper on artificial intelligence in a journal before, which caused a commotion in the field of artificial intelligence, but with that paper alone, Yi Huaqing also I don't believe how reliable Zhou Ming can come up with.

"Can you tell me what kind of artificial intelligence project it is? What aspect?" Yi Huaqing asked Zhou Ming with a suspicious tone.

Although Yi Huaqing does not study artificial intelligence, he also knows that the research scope and application of artificial intelligence are also very wide.

"It's mainly about predicting the structure of proteins." Zhou Ming explained simply, but the content of this sentence was not simple to Yi Huaqing's ears, and it could even be said that there was a huge amount of information.

Protein structure is divided into four levels, which are primary structure, secondary structure, tertiary structure and quaternary structure. It is not so easy to predict accurately.

As early as 1972, the American biochemist Christian Boehmer Anfinsen once put forward a vision in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: one day, we can identify any protein only through the sequence composition of amino acids. structure is predicted.

But in fact?
In fact, until now, scientists have only built computer models to predict how a given protein folds. Such predictions do not score well in the biennial protein structure prediction competition. Now the modellers The score is usually only around 70 points.

"Your third project is to study an artificial intelligence for accurate protein structure prediction?" Yi Huaqing asked Zhou Ming suspiciously.

It's no wonder that Yi Huaqing doesn't believe Zhou Ming. After all, in terms of artificial intelligence, the country on the other side of the ocean is ahead of them by more than 01:30. What can Zhou Ming do?

However, if the project mentioned by Zhou Ming can really be researched in the next few years, then their company's research alone will be enough to attract worldwide attention.

There are thousands of proteins in the human body, and if their structures could be accurately predicted, it could help provide new insights into basic biology and reveal new drug targets with clinical implications.

The previous era in which protein structures could only be determined through laborious laboratory analysis will be gone forever, and a new era of biology will usher.

Although he didn't really believe that the research that Zhou Ming said could be successful, Yi Huaqing still had some hope in his heart, and he expected Zhou Ming to give a confident and affirmative answer.

"That's right, and the results of this research won't take more than a year." Zhou Ming said affirmatively, but he didn't continue to say anything more about this matter, but talked about two other projects.

"Our company's previous two studies were [a new type of biofilm method for sewage treatment system] and [relevant research on synthetic microorganisms of cyanobacteria in water blooms], both of which are related to water pollution.

Although the next two projects you will carry out are not dealing with water pollution, they are also related to dealing with environmental pollution.

After all, the road of environmental protection is now also taken seriously by the higher authorities, and we will certainly not suffer a loss if we continue to take the road of environmental protection. "

"What are the main aspects of these two projects?" Seeing that Zhou Ming didn't say more about the artificial intelligence project, Yi Huaqing didn't want to ask more, but asked about the specific situation of these two projects. The scope of dealing with environmental pollution is too large.

In addition to the treatment of water pollution is related to the treatment of environmental pollution, the treatment of air pollution, soil pollution, noise pollution, light pollution, etc. are all related to the treatment of environmental pollution.

"These two projects are [Efficient Restoration of Landfill Leachate Based on Synthetic Microbiome] and [Design and Construction of Microbial Chassis Cells in Special Environment].

I will send you the specific content of these two studies in a few days, let me tell you about their general research content..."

Then, Zhou Ming explained to Yi Huaqing the general content of the two studies.

The high-efficiency restoration of landfill leachate based on synthetic microbiome, the main research content is to design an efficient organic matter efflux protein pump for the extreme environment of landfill leachate, and construct an artificial cell system that can tolerate high concentrations of pollutants; Concentration, refractory persistent toxic pollutants, such as halogenated aromatic hydrocarbons, antibiotics, and new persistent organic pollutants, etc., rationally construct an artificially synthesized microbiome with high-efficiency degradation and stress resistance; analyze the key components of the artificially synthesized microbiome Coupling mechanism with pollutant degradation process; combined with advanced material design, a recyclable "resistance-degradation" composite landfill leachate repair system is formed.

If this research is entrusted to Yi Huaqing, whose main research direction is not in this field, it will be very difficult for him to do it.

But with Zhou Ming around, it's easy.

The difficulty of this research lies in the relevant design, construction of the relevant system, and analysis mechanism. Zhou Ming already has the results in his mind. What his company's laboratory needs to do is to supplement the intermediate process according to the results. After all When you come up with a result, you definitely need the support of experimental data. It is absolutely impossible to produce research results out of thin air without research experiments. Otherwise, people will only think that your results are either fake or stealing other people's research results.

It's like when you do a math problem, all the big questions that should write about the disintegration process only write one answer, and if you don't write about the problem-solving process, it will definitely not work.

The design and construction of microbial chassis cells in special environments, the main research content is to solve the problems of low cell activity and growth inhibition caused by substrates, products, metabolites and environmental factors in the process of environmental protection and bioremediation. Special microorganisms with application value or theoretical significance are used as research objects to study the interaction between cells-compounds-environment, to find specific functional elements, such as functional DNA modification elements, global regulatory elements, chaperone protein components, etc.; to develop target chassis microorganisms High-efficiency genetic operating system; integrate specific functional components to construct special microbial chassis cells with strong environmental adaptability and efficient and stable gene editing.

In the specific documents that Zhou Ming handed over to Yi Huaqing later on, such as the research objects and specific functional components of this research, it will be mentioned that the research of this project should be a little longer than the previous one, but it will certainly not take too long. time.

In short, the research time of these two projects will certainly not be longer than that of artificial intelligence.

After hearing Zhou Ming finished talking about these two projects, Yi Huaqing asked Zhou Ming: "You can apply to the higher authorities for these two projects, and you should be able to apply for some government funding and subsidies. Also, what you said before you want to study Does the project of artificial intelligence accurately predict protein structure require the company to recruit people now? The company does not have artificial intelligence talents now."

"There is no need to recruit people for the time being, but you can disclose a little information to the outside world first, and then start recruiting people after I go to the University of Science and Technology of China. I have a lot of research materials to write in this area, and now even if I recruit people, I will use it." No." After hearing Yi Huaqing's question, Zhou Ming thought for a while before saying.

(End of this chapter)