Most people who have access to a modern healthcare system would not consider a disease like bubonic plague to be a threat. Such bacterial infections are usually dealt with easily through modern antibiotics. Yet antibiotic resistance, where bacteria evolve the ability to defeat these drugs, is fast becoming a growing global problem - and new antibiotics are thin on the ground.
Marcelo Sousa and Megan Mitchell at the University of Colorado Boulder are looking at a different approach: targeting the resistance mechanism itself, controlled in this case with enzymes.
As part of Unfolded, a series meeting the scientists using AlphaFold, Marcelo and Megan explain how they solved the structure of one such enzyme - a challenge that a decade of experimentation couldn’t complete - in minutes.
Find more Unfolded stories at unfolded.deepmind.com