Sandra Ribeiro has recently participated in the EMBO Workshop “When predictions meet experiments: The future of structured determination” with an oral communication on the topic “Experiments and predictions uncover pathogen-specific structural features in C. albicans Ras1 activation complex”. The event took place in the beautiful city of Palermo in Italy and gathered fundamental researchers to discuss the impact of AI-based prediction on protein structure determination.
“In the last two years, AI-based protein structure prediction methods exploded and provided access to 200 million predicted structures. While contributing immensely to speeding up the experimental determination of protein structures, some challenges still lie ahead for AI structure prediction methods, such as protein dynamics, mutations, protein interactions, and conformational ensembles in intrinsically disordered proteins. As AI-based methods rely on experimental 3D structures, the two communities must continue working together to generate more data as training sets to improve structure predictions. The structural biology community should also create a task force to enhance the understanding of the widely diverse quality protein structure predictions. These models are great starting hypotheses that need to be experimentally investigated.” Sandra says.
This was a great opportunity to meet new researchers and open new possible collaborations while also meeting with old friends such as Annalisa Pastore, a member of the organizing committee.
More information about the event can be found here.