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Structure predictions by AI


Artifical Intelligence (AI) has enabled the development of powerful algorithms that can predict protein structures from plain amino acid sequences. AlphaFold Multimer (AFM) is one such structural prediction program that can predict protein complexes. We discovered that AFM is a powerful predictor of extracellular interactions between plant and pathogen-secreted proteins. Using powerful computing cluster at Oxford University, we use AFM to screen for novel extracellular interactions between pathogen- and plant-secreted proteins of important crop pathogens. This knowledge leads us to annotate functions of pathogen-secreted proteins and to new strategies to engineer plant protein such that they are no longer manipulated, increasing the basal immunity of crops in a sustainable manner.