AlphaMutate | Devpost

Inspiration

We wanted to get more involved with the Drug Discovery research field and thought that this hackathon would be a good chance to try out developing a project to aid that process. The members of the group all thought the Alphafold library was interesting and were interested in implementing an actual service using them.

What it does

Given a protein sequence, our application will direct the user to a website where they can see an interactive 3D model of the closest matching protein that is in the Alphafold database, allowing for incomplete sequence inputs. The application also hosts a Gemini based chatbot that will answer any questions about the protein that was chosen from Alphafold as well as models of some mutations of the protein that may be useful for other applications.

How we built it

We built this application using a Svelte based website and a backend that consists of Gemini and Alphafold API calls.

Challenges we ran into

We were unable to implement many of the things we had planned out, such as using RF-diffusion to implement binder design or MD simulations with the proteins. This was largely due to a lack of clarity in dependencies, along with certain services required to implement those features being very complex or lengthy to implement.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of our user interface and the design / structure of the website and the workflow we have created. We are also proud of creating something that could actually be incredibly helpful to various fields of protein research, based on our discussions with experienced researchers in this field.

What we learned

We learned a new style of front-end web development with Svelte, as well as new technologies like AlphaFold and Gen-AI Integration with an interactive element on a website.

What's next for AlphaMutate

Some potential expansions for our project include implementing RF-diffusion to help find "Binders" where proteins can be linked to other proteins. We also want to expand our use cases to implement molecular dynamics simulations. Currently our project is catered towards chemistry applications, however using simulation softwares like OpenMD and GROMACS, we can also cater towards different fields of research, like materials science.