The AlphaFold database expands to over 200 million structures
EMBL-EBI and DeepMind expanded the database roughly two hundredfold, to predicted structures for more than 200 million protein sequences — effectively the whole of UniProt, covering almost every organism whose genome has been sequenced. A 2024 database paper reports coverage of over 214 million sequences. This is the moment the change becomes structural rather than exemplary: predicted structure stopped being something obtained for a protein of interest and became a property the catalogue already had.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- AlphaFold Protein Structure Database · infrastructure · United Kingdom
- AlphaFold · technology system · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
AlphaFold Protein Structure Database — release records, 2024 database paper, and database FAQ
The database opened in July 2021 with the human proteome and model organisms, expanded on 28 July 2022 to more than 200 million predicted structures covering effectively the whole of UniProt, and is reported in a 2024 database paper as covering over 214 million sequences; the FAQ states that AlphaFold has not been validated for predicting the effects of destabilising point mutations and that its output is a single conformation rather than a sample of a conformational ensemble. V55 verification basis: no EMBL-EBI page was fetched; search results carried the July 2022 two-hundredfold expansion, the 214-million figure and the paper title with attribution to EMBL-EBI, and carried the mutation and single-conformation limitations with attribution to the AlphaFold DB FAQ. The reported size at the July 2021 launch differs between summaries (figures near 300,000 and near 350,000 both appear) and is therefore not asserted. The adoption figures — over three million researchers in more than 190 countries by late 2025, over a million of them in low- and middle-income countries, and an independently analysed rise of over 40% in users' submissions of novel experimental structures — reached this record through secondary reporting of DeepMind and EMBL-EBI communications and require confirmation.
EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute, with Google DeepMind · 2021-07 to 2025 · Partly verified
AlphaFold DB, https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/ ; EMBL-EBI release note, "New AlphaFold DB release with 200+ million predicted structures", 28 July 2022; Varadi, M. et al., "AlphaFold Protein Structure Database in 2024: providing structure coverage for over 214 million protein sequences", Nucleic Acids Research (PMC10767828); AlphaFold DB FAQ, https://alphafold.ebi.ac.uk/faq
Recorded on AlphaFold Protein Structure Database
- AlphaFold2 is assessed blind at CASP14
- AlphaFold2 is published and the database opens
- The AlphaFold database expands to over 200 million structures
- The Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognises protein structure prediction
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.