培育适应气候变暖的韧性作物
阅读原文· deepmind.google科学家运用AlphaFold人工智能技术优化光合作用关键酶结构,增强作物耐热性,培育适应全球气候变暖的韧性作物品种,为粮食安全提供新解决方案。
How AlphaFold is helping scientists engineer more heat-tolerant crops — Google DeepMind
December 4, 2025 Science
Engineering more resilient crops for a warming climate
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Scientists are using AlphaFold in their research to strengthen an enzyme that’s vital to photosynthesis, paving the way for more heat-tolerant crops.
As global warming accompanies more droughts and heatwaves, harvests of some staple crops are shrinking. But less visible is what is happening inside these plants, where high heat can break down the molecular machinery that keeps them alive.
At the heart of that machinery lies a sun-powered process that supports virtually all life on Earth: photosynthesis. Plants use photosynthesis to produce the glucose that fuels their growth via an intricate choreography of enzymes inside plant cells. As global temperatures rise, that choreography can falter.
Berkley Walker, an associate professor at Michigan State University, spends his days thinking about how to keep that choreography in step. "Nature already holds the blueprints for lots of enzymes that can handle heat," he says. "Our job is to learn from those examples and build that same resilience into the crops we depend on."