AI points researchers toward new disease targets hidden in mitochondria
Artificial intelligence is helping Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists fast-track answers to a long-standing question in human biology: What do hundreds of mystery proteins in the mitochondria actually do?
Researchers at Texas A&M AgriLife are leveraging artificial intelligence to uncover previously unknown functions of proteins within human mitochondria. About 1,100 mitochondrial proteins have been identified, but the precise role of many remains unclear, as mutations in roughly 30% of these proteins are linked to various diseases, from common ones like cancer, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's to rare inherited metabolic disorders.
Conventional methods to determine protein functions are slow, prompting the team to utilize an AI tool called AlphaFold-Multimer. This tool predicted interactions between 630,003 possible pairs of human mitochondrial proteins, identifying 2,895 likely interactions, many of which had never been reported before. The AI predictions have already helped validate several partnerships in yeast and human cells, informing laboratory experiments that could lead to new diagnostic and therapeutic targets.
The study's findings are published in Nature Communications and made available as a free online resource, MitoMatch, to facilitate further research globally.
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