Researchers at IBM and Moderna have successfully used a quantum simulation algorithm to predict the complex secondary protein structure of a 60-nucleotide-long mRNA sequence, the longest ever simulated on a quantum computer.
Messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) is a molecule that carries genetic information from DNA to ribosomes. It directs protein synthesis in cells and is used to create effective vaccines capable of instigating specific immune responses.
It’s widely believed that all the information required for a protein to adopt the correct three-dimensional conformation is provided by its amino acid sequence or "folding."
