Artificial intelligence cracks the language of cancer and Alzheimer's disease

Fluorescence microscope image of protein condensate in living cells.

Recently, scientists have discovered that powerful algorithms used by Netflix, Amazon and Facebook can "predict" the biological language of neurodegenerative diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's disease.

Researchers input big data generated by decades of research into a computer language model to test whether artificial intelligence can make more advanced discoveries than humans.

Related papers were recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States, and may be used in the future to "correct grammatical errors in cells that cause diseases.

Tuomas Knowles, the first author of the paper, said: “The introduction of machine learning technology into neurodegenerative diseases and cancer research is definitely a game changer.

Netflix can recommend a series, Facebook recommend someone to be friends, these platforms use powerful machine learning algorithms to guess what people will do next.

Researchers used similar machine learning techniques to train a large-scale language model to observe what happens when problems with proteins in the body cause diseases.

The researchers specifically asked the program to learn the language of biomolecular condensate (droplets of protein found in cells) to decipher the language of biological functions and malfunctions that lead to neurodegenerative diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's.

Researchers say that further applications of machine learning may change future research on cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

Related paper information: http://dx.