AlphaFold solved a 50-year-old biology problem in 2020

Protein folding — predicting the 3D structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence — was described as biology's 'grand challenge' for 50 years. In 2020, DeepMind's AlphaFold2 solved it with near-crystallography accuracy, predicting the structures of virtually all 200 million known proteins. This matters because protein shape determines function and drug binding. Researchers who previously spent years determining a single protein structure can now do it in minutes for free — a gift DeepMind made public without charge.

Source: Jumper et al., Nature (2021)