AlphaFold2 is published and the database opens
The method was published in Nature (596, 583–589) in July 2021, and EMBL-EBI opened the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database in the same month with predicted structures for the human proteome and a set of model organisms. Publishing the method and giving away the outputs at once is what converted a competition result into infrastructure: a laboratory anywhere could now begin from a predicted structure without running the model or negotiating access to it.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- AlphaFold · technology system · not located
- AlphaFold Protein Structure Database · infrastructure · United Kingdom
- John Jumper · person · United States · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent. This is the standing of the weakest source, not an average.
Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold
AlphaFold2 predicts protein structure from sequence at accuracy competitive with experimental determination for most targets, as assessed blind at CASP14 in 2020, where predictions are reported to have achieved a median domain GDT_TS of 92.4 including on free-modelling targets. V55 verification basis: the paper was NOT fetched — nature.com is blocked to this session — but search results carried the title, journal, volume 596 and pages 583–589 and attributed them to this paper, and carried the CASP14 accuracy characterisation. The 92.4 median GDT_TS figure is attributed in retrieved summaries to the CASP14 assessment literature rather than to this paper, and a curator should confirm which document reports it before it is quoted as the paper's own statistic.
Nature (Springer Nature) · 2021-07 · Verified
Jumper, J. et al., Nature 596, 583–589 (2021); https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03819-2 (PubMed 34265844)
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
- 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.