The Illustrated AlphaFold

Abstract

Do you want to understand exactly how AlphaFold3 works? The architecture is quite complicated and the description in the paper can be overwhelming, so we made a much more accessible (but just as detailed!) visual walkthrough. There are already many great explanations of the motivation for protein structure prediction, the CASP competition, model failure modes, debates about evaluations, implications for biotech, etc. so we don’t focus on any of that. Instead we explore the how. How are these molecules represented in the model and what are all of the operations that convert their sequences into a predicted structure? As we walk through every step of this process, we explain 30 algorithms in ~40 clear diagrams, then share some thoughts on how they fit into the broader landscape of ML trends.