Hacker News

Google DeepMind Releases AlphaGenome Atlas

130 points by utiiiD 2 hours ago | 24 comments

Cool. But is this actually advanced biology, or just making predictions about biology more accurate? Those aren't the same thing.

jFmDRz73 22 minutes ago

This Google blog post is a distilled version of a Deep Mind blog post:

https://deepmind.google/blog/alphagenome-atlas-a-predictive-...

They are only announcing a cache. The origin for the cache is not discussed.

In particular, the question of whether to trust the predictions is not addressed. For that, I think the citation is from January:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-10014-0

leopoldj 23 minutes ago

Videos. [2] is for the scientists to start using AlphaGenome Atlas from AntiGravity.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0aToL5C-bQ

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2qw3rDNX0Q

asxndu 33 minutes ago

I really love Deep Mind, its genuinely focused on using AI to make the world a better place.

sssilver 28 minutes ago

Be careful when loving shareholder-driven endeavors; they're a single executive decision away from breaking your heart.

mdp2021 15 minutes ago

It's "shareholder-linked" (probably not "driven"), but yes, upvoted. Nonetheless, even when with grave faults in the path, Google has managed to give us marvellous, paramount free resources (Google Street, Google Museum...), and would have given more (Google Books - if the negotiation had succeeded). I am grateful.

dgellow 22 minutes ago

No AI company is doing that. There is some benefits but that’s not what any AI for profit will ever focus upon

heaney-555 11 minutes ago

DeepMind objectively is doing that. The world is not so black and white as "evil profit-hungry corporations will never do anything good".

dgellow 8 minutes ago

I preemptively acknowledged that in my comment…

mertcikla 2 hours ago

not my field so I can't judge how useful it is but assuming this data can be used for drug discovery and their ToS limiting to non-commercial use only. Does DeepMind plan on selling this data to pharmaceutical companies?

abirch 37 minutes ago

Probably. I know Google has partnerships with Pharma: https://www.merck.com/news/merck-and-google-cloud-partner-to...

dekhn 45 minutes ago

Individual SNP predictions are not useful for drug discovery. Pharma might license this, but mainly out of fear of missing out.

falcor84 2 hours ago

My understanding is that they already are, via Isomorphic Labs

bpodgursky 34 minutes ago

It's a bigger deal for diagnostics than for drug development.

PunchTornado 57 minutes ago

Hopefully. Tired, as a shareholder, to see the giveaways that deepmind is doing.

boston_clone 32 minutes ago

Astroturfing, eh? This is verbatim the same comment as another user in this thread. Strange...

incognito124 26 minutes ago

PunchTornado was first, fr2029 was second

fr2029 16 minutes ago

i made no such comment. reported for harassment.

WarmWash 24 minutes ago

Google doing work to uncover the pandoras box of genetics? How long before they shove this under the rug...

orliesaurus 22 minutes ago

the Google DeepMind PR team can't catch a break, shame it makes no sense to me - if someone's in the field maybe they could explain to the rest of us if this is a big deal, just a PR move, or nah?

dgellow 18 minutes ago

Just wait a few months, if it is a big deal that will likely be obvious by then

orliesaurus 14 minutes ago

i like this way of thinking ;)

dyauspitr 9 minutes ago

What are you even talking about? What do you mean catch a break? They’ve made massive contributions over the last decades.

parasxos 58 minutes ago

An atlas of the human genome from the company whose other atlas still routes me into a lake.