Brookhaven researchers use AI to help engineer biofuel crops to grow in poor soils

In Illinois, biologists and computational scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory recently refined two artificial intelligence (AI) programs originally built by Meta, the company that owns Facebook, to predict protein shapes. Their new combined model, called ESMBind, can predict the 3D structure of proteins to reveal how they bind to nutrient metals like zinc and iron, which are essential for life.

This AI approach, the scientists say, will help them understand how plants absorb essential metals from soil. This could be an early step toward engineering biofuel crops to grow in poor soil conditions that lack these nutrients, reserving more fertile land for growing food.