AI has made various contributions to the healthcare sector.
Protein folding refers to the way in which a chain of amino acids folds to form proteins. The order of the amino acids determines how the amino acids fold together, and hence the function of the protein.
The structure of proteins can be determined expreimentally through the use of techniques like x-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance [1], but these techniques are time consuming and expensive. Due to the trial and error nature of x-ray crystallography, you can expect to find the structure of a protein within a few days or weeks [2]. On the other hand, alphafold can find the shape of the protein "within a few days" [1]