Google DeepMind visits TSL
As long-time admirers of Google DeepMind’s tools and systems, our researchers were excited to show Lila Ibrahim and the team how we harness AlphaFold in our plant health research.
Google DeepMind COO, Lila Ibrahim, and her team were given a tour of The Sainsbury Laboratory by Sophien Kamoun.
At TSL, we’re committed to embracing cutting-edge technologies, championing interdisciplinary collaboration, and translating science into global impact.
During the Google DeepMind visit, it was so rewarding to have our teams connect and understand how closely our organisations’ missions resonate with one another: from applying AI to tackle sustainability and food security challenges, to investing in training and human development.
“AlphaFold has completely transformed our ability to study plant immunity.” says Sophien Kamoun, who led the visit with his group members, “It’s been particularly powerful in enabling the functional annotation of immune receptors and the bioengineering of improved disease-resistance genes.”
In 2024 the Kamoun group, in collaboration with scientists at the John Innes Centre and Imperial College London, published a paper showing how AlphaFold 3 (an AI system developed by Google Deepmind) can be used as a tool to study the structural diversity of activated NLRs
Read the paper: A disease resistance protein triggers oligomerization of its NLR helper into a hexameric resistosome to mediate innate immunity
On behalf of everyone at TSL, thank you to the Google DeepMind team for your genuine curiosity and appreciation of our work, and for inspiring us with your vision. We’re excited to explore new ways to accelerate progress on some of the world’s most pressing scientific challenges.
