Charlotte Deane | Bioinformatics, Deepmind's AlphaFold 2, and Llamas
#datascience #ai

Charlotte Deane (Oxford University) talks about statistical approaches to bioinformatics, the evolution of Google Deepmind's AlphaFold 2 & its place in protein informatics deep learning landscape. She also describes humanizing antibodies, and the increasing role of software engineers in statistical research groups. The topic of llamas, camels, and alpacas (and their unique place in proteomics research) makes a surprise visit.

[Note: This episode was originally published in January 2022, but the file contained a buffering error, which prevented the full interview from being played. This version, published Feb 1, 2022 contains the full interview.]

Topics
0:00 Intro / An important topic to debate
3:50 What is a protein? Why are proteins foundational?
13:32 Immunotherapies, humanizing antibodies, & creating an scientific databases
16:04 Translating in silico research into immunotherapies
21:03 Nanobodies, camels, alpacas, & llamas. 
25:05:00 Databases and data knowledge bases
33:21:00 Targeted therapies
39:45:00 Statistical modeling in proteomics
45:40:00 DeepMind AlphaFold's evolution
55:28:00 Software engineers in academic research groups
1:03:21 The adventure of science
1:07:42 Oxford Blues hockey & scientific debate