Proteins are like workhorses of our body, working each and every seconds. They perform wide range of jobs which includes repairing DNA and synthesizing new cells. Proteins are chains of twenty different amino acids. Each sequence of amino acid is unique and could be entirely different from each other. The chemical forces at molecular level in those amino acid chains give rise to a unique 3D structure, which plays an important part in their respective functionality.
For instance, hemoglobin’s shape allows it to bind oxygen when the protein is in lungs. Once it is inside any other cell, it changes its shape to release that oxygen and this happens thousands of times everyday.
The shape of any protein depends on sequence of amino acid and also temperature and pH of its surrounding. Researchers are more interested in translating amino acids sequence into their structure. However, traditional computing is often not enough to provide computational power to determine the shape of proteins from a given sequence of amino acids. Human beings are looking to make their own protein in order to simulate our immune system against a number of diseases and to deliver drugs to specific cell so that healthy cells are not affected, just to mention few of potential applications. In summary, we can say artificial protein synthesis could be next big thing. But before that, the field of computing needs to provided biologist a tool to analyze the forces acting on each atom and precisely predict the structure. One can safely say that computing field could open the floodgates of innovation in medical science and computer researchers should work together to seize this opportunity.
The Future Chip 