"Right, so DNA, as you said, it is kind of, like, the blueprint for life. Every cell in our bodies has this long genetic code that consists of basically four letters, so A, T, G and Cthe nucleotidesand then these nucleotides, or letters, bind together in what are called base pairs. And it's the order of those base pairs that really determines the code for every single protein in our bodies, and these are the proteins that perform all the vital functions of our cells and also things that go wrong when we have disease."
"You know, over the past few decades we've, like, managed to sequence the entire human genome. But it's a little bit like we now have all the words to a book of a language we don't speak, and now we're trying to figure out what the different codes actually mean."
Google researchers developed an AI model named AlphaGenome that can predict functions of specific DNA segments. DNA consists of four nucleotides—A, T, G and C—whose base-pair order encodes proteins. Proteins perform vital cellular functions and underlie disease processes. The complete human genome sequence exists, but functional roles for many DNA regions remain unknown. The current challenge is translating the genome's sequences into meaningful biological function. AlphaGenome's predictions could help map sequence to function and improve understanding of how genetic codes produce proteins and how variations contribute to disease.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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