From an article by Jon Markman at thestreet.com:
Using data, machine learning and AI, Alphabet managers are incubating vibrant new businesses in pharma and tech. One or more of these will become exciting stand-alone businesses.
This might seem a particularly bad time to be investing in big tech.
President Trump said Tuesday morning that his administration would look into accusations that Google has been secretly working with the Chinese military. The charge came from Peter Thiel, a PayPal (PYPL – Get Report) co-founder and strong supporter of the president.
On the other hand, Bloomberg reported Tuesday that DeepMind, the artificial-intelligence arm of Alphabet, (GOOGL – Get Report) might be on the cusp of a major breakthrough in the way new drugs are discovered.
It’s an important innovation. It’s hiding inside the search giant. And it couldn’t come at a better time.
This business is on to something really big. Using data, machine learning and AI, Alphabet managers are incubating vibrant new businesses with innovative business models. One or more of these will become exciting stand-alone businesses.
Some analysts are already doing sum-of-the-parts analyses and they like what they see.
A Jefferies analyst pegged the value of Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving-car business, at $250 billion in December 2018, according to a story at Business Insider.
Alphabet’s market capitalization is $798 billion, with units including YouTube, Google Search, Google Cloud, Android, the Nest security camera and peripheral businesses, Google Capital, and Stadia, its new video game streaming service set to launch in November.
Together, these parts are probably worth well over $1 trillion.
Until now, the business opportunity for DeepMind was not even on investors’ radar.
The subsidiary has its roots in DeepMind Technologies, a British AI startup that was making progress teaching computers the quirks of human short-term memory. Alphabet acquired the business in 2014.
Two years later, its custom AlphaGo code was so advanced that it became the first computer program to defeat a human in a match of Go, the ancient Chinese strategy game. That human happened to be Lee Sedol, the 18-time world champion.
At the CASP13 meeting in Mexico in December 2018, DeepMind was at it again. This time its human challengers were the brightest minds in biology. The task was predicting the shapes of proteins.
Understanding these structures is important because they govern how diseases form. The problem is there are more possible protein shapes than there are atoms in the universe, Bloomberg notes.
The math has vexed computational biologists for the past 25 years. They have been trying to build more predictive software models for protein folding, the process that leads to proteins taking three-dimensional shapes.
Despite its limited experience with folding, AlphaFold, DeepMind’s entrant, predicted the most accurate structure for 25 out of 43 proteins, taking the top spot over 98 participating teams, according to a report in the Guardian.
Image Credit: Google AI
News This Week
Scientists study lipids cell by cell, making new cancer research possible
Imagine being able to look inside a single cancer cell and see how it communicates with its neighbors. Scientists are celebrating a new technique that lets them study the fatty contents of cancer cells, [...]
Antibiotic Breakthrough: Revolutionary Chinese Study Paves Way for Superbug Defeating Drugs
New research reveals that fluorous lipopetides act as highly effective antibiotics. Bacterial infections resistant to multiple drugs, which no existing antibiotics can treat, represent a significant worldwide challenge. A research group from China has [...]
Signs of Multiple Sclerosis Show Up in Blood Years Before Symptoms Appear
UCSF scientists clear a potential path toward earlier treatment for a disease that affects nearly 1,000,000 people in the United States. By Levi Gadye In a discovery that could hasten treatment for patients with multiple [...]
Advanced RNA Sequencing Reveals the Drivers of New COVID Variants
A study reveals that a new sequencing technique, tARC-seq, can accurately track mutations in SARS-CoV-2, providing insights into the rapid evolution and variant development of the virus. The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID has the unsettling [...]
No More Endless Boosters? Scientists Develop One-for-All Virus Vaccine
End of the line for endless boosters? Researchers at UC Riverside have developed a new vaccine approach using RNA that is effective against any strain of a virus and can be used safely even by babies or the immunocompromised. Every [...]
How Are Hydrogels Shaping the Future of Biomedicine?
Hydrogels have gained widespread recognition and utilization in biomedical engineering, with their applications dating back to the 1960s when they were first used in contact lens production. Hydrogels are distinguished from other biomaterials in [...]
Nanovials method for immune cell screening uncovers receptors that target prostate cancer
A recent UCLA study demonstrates a new process for screening T cells, part of the body's natural defenses, for characteristics vital to the success of cell-based treatments. The method filters T cells based on [...]
New Research Reveals That Your Sense of Smell May Be Smarter Than You Think
A new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience indicates that the sense of smell is significantly influenced by cues from other senses, whereas the senses of sight and hearing are much less affected. A popular [...]
Deadly bacteria show thirst for human blood: the phenomenon of bacterial vampirism
Some of the world's deadliest bacteria seek out and feed on human blood, a newly-discovered phenomenon researchers are calling "bacterial vampirism." A team led by Washington State University researchers has found the bacteria are [...]
Organ Architects: The Remarkable Cells Shaping Our Development
Finding your way through the winding streets of certain cities can be a real challenge without a map. To orient ourselves, we rely on a variety of information, including digital maps on our phones, [...]
Novel hydrogel removes microplastics from water
Microplastics pose a great threat to human health. These tiny plastic debris can enter our bodies through the water we drink and increase the risk of illnesses. They are also an environmental hazard; found [...]
Researchers Discover New Origin of Deep Brain Waves
Understanding hippocampal activity could improve sleep and cognition therapies. Researchers from the University of California, Irvine’s biomedical engineering department have discovered a new origin for two essential brain waves—slow waves and sleep spindles—that are critical for [...]
The Lifelong Cost of Surviving COVID: Scientists Uncover Long-Term Effects
Many of the individuals released to long-term acute care facilities suffered from conditions that lasted for over a year. Researchers at UC San Francisco studied COVID-19 patients in the United States who survived some of the longest and [...]
Previously Unknown Rogue Immune Key to Chronic Viral Infections Discovered
Scientists discovered a previously unidentified rogue immune cell linked to poor antibody responses in chronic viral infections. Australian researchers have discovered a previously unknown rogue immune cell that can cause poor antibody responses in [...]
Nature’s Betrayal: Unmasking Lead Lurking in Herbal Medicine
A case of lead poisoning due to Ayurvedic medicine use demonstrates the importance of patient history in diagnosis and the need for public health collaboration to prevent similar risks. An article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association [...]
Frozen in Time: How a DNA Anomaly Misled Scientists for Centuries
An enormous meteor spelled doom for most dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But not all. In the aftermath of the extinction event, birds — technically dinosaurs themselves — flourished. Scientists have spent centuries trying [...]
Leave A Comment