The New Era of AI-Powered Protein Design | César Ramírez-Sarmiento | TED

My name is César Ramirez-Sarmiento. I'm based in Santiago, Chile.

I'm a protein engineer and designer. Proteins are macromolecules which are composed of amino acids.

They are made of 20 different types of amino acids.

They are represented by letters. So you can imagine an alphabet of amino acids, and you can imagine that these amino acids are connected to each other like beads on a string.

And so that allows for them to come together in different geometries.

And so they get a shape, they get a three-dimensional structure that allows for them to dictate their functions.

We have many different proteins with many different shapes that actually perform different biological functions in cells.

They allow us to digest food, they allow us to transport ions for electrical signals to go through neurons.