A protein's function depends on its three dimensional shape, which used to require slow, costly laboratory work to determine. AI models trained on known structures can now predict a protein's likely shape from its building-block sequence, often in minutes, and this capability has become a standard tool in biology.
Faster structure prediction helps researchers understand disease, design molecules and plan experiments, pointing effort at the most promising directions. The predictions are estimates, not certainties, and unusual or flexible proteins remain hard, so scientists still confirm critical results in the lab while using the models to work far more quickly than before.