Information AgeScience & Math AlphaFold solves protein folding 2020Turning point AI predicts protein structures, solving a 50-year problem; it wins the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. ▲ MattersSaveShareTrace roots Longest chain: The Big Bang → First stars ignite → Supernovae seed heavy elements → The Sun forms → Earth forms → First oceans → First life → Photosynthesis evolves → Great Oxidation Event → Complex cells (eukaryotes) → Multicellular life → First animals → Cambrian Explosion → First vertebrates → Jawed fish → Fish walk onto land → The amniotic egg → The Great Dying → Dinosaurs appear → Asteroid ends the dinosaurs → Early primates → Apes split from monkeys → Human line splits from chimpanzees → Walking upright → First stone tools → Genus Homo appears → Homo erectus → Control of fire → Habitual fire and cooking → Homo sapiens appears → Complex language → Natufian villages → Oldest known bread → Agriculture begins → Irrigation → Uruk and the first cities → Cylinder seals → Writing (cuneiform) → Babylonian mathematics → Babylonian astronomical diaries → Thales and natural philosophy → Trial and death of Socrates → Plato's Academy → Aristotle's Lyceum → Alexander's conquests → Alexandria founded → Library of Alexandria → House of Wisdom → Ibn al-Haytham's Book of Optics → Bacon's Novum Organum → Royal Society → Papin's steam digester → Newcomen steam engine → Watt's steam engine → Thermodynamics → Entropy → Quantum hypothesis → Bohr model of the atom → Quantum mechanics → Transistor → Integrated circuit → ARPANET → TCP/IP → World Wide Web → ImageNet → Deep learning breakthrough → AlphaFold solves protein folding Community notesLoading notes… Learn more ranked by votesDocumentdoi.orgJumper et al. (2021), AlphaFold (Nature) ↗Editor's pickDocumentnobelprize.orgThe Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024, popular information (protein structure prediction) ↗Editor's pickVideoSearch on YouTubeAlphaFold protein folding explained ↗Editor's pick