Proteins
She would hollow out a turnip, fill its cavity with honey, place it near the hearth, as the honey slowly melted into turnip’s flesh, I would drink it, and sleep smelling the smell of a sacred herb, isiriq , which she used to protect my brothers from catching my illness. That's how my mom cured any illness I caught using traditional methods. I even remember how I got better eating ,during Covid-19, just by eating hot jizza - rendered fat from the ship’s back - with raw onions.
Surprised, I would ask my mom how she learnt these treatments, I would be referred from my grandma, to my grandma's grandma, and probably all the way back to godfathers of medicine, Ibn Sina and Albucasis.
Now, 19-year old me, started to understand how and why those traditional medicines really worked, and how do we really catch an illness? There are tiny molecules in our bodies, if one changes, or breaks or even 'misbehaves', it will cause an illness. Those tiny molecules are called Proteins.
Think of them as microscopic puzzle pieces that must fold perfectly to create the masterpiece. These molecular origami molecules are made up of amino acids like a string of beads that need to fold into exact shapes to work properly. Just as a paper airplane won't fly if folded incorrectly, a misfolded protein can't do its job in our body. A single mistake in this intricate folding can lead to the protein misbehaving, causing various illnesses.
To prevent these protein misfoldings, scientists have been trying for decades to predict how these chains fold because the folded shape determines what the protein can do. Recently, Google's DeepMind won a Nobel for its 'AlphaFold 2,' an AI model that can predict how proteins take on their unique shapes, this might be the revolution in medicine, and find ultimate cures for some life-threatening illnesses like Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, and Mad Cow Disease.
Do you want me to write about how AlphaFold 2 made it?
