Breaking through AlphaFold's limits to predict how proteins change shape

Conformational changes in proteins are vital to their function yet remain challenging for state-of-the-art artificial intelligence, such as AlphaFold3, to predict. Researchers at the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS), and the Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI introduced a repulsive force between predicted structures, allowing AlphaFold3 to sample the multiple conformational states that its default settings rarely capture.