Researchers at Texas A&M AgriLife Research are using artificial intelligence to study about 1,100 proteins in mitochondria, the energy centers of human cells, whose functions are largely unknown. The researchers said mutations in nearly 30% of these proteins have been linked to diseases, including cancer, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and some rare inherited metabolic disorders.
In a study published in Nature Communications, the team used an AI tool called AlphaFold-Multimer to screen more than 630,000 possible pairings of the proteins for likely interactions. The study reported 2,895 likely interactions, and more than half had not been reported before. The predictions also gave 85 previously uncharacterized proteins their first probable partners.
About two years of lab experiments confirmed several of the predicted partnerships in yeast and human cells. Some of that work was done with researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Abhinav Swaminathan, the study's lead author, said, "If we don't know the function of these individual proteins, we cannot determine how to treat the diseases they may cause."