AlphaGenome Atlas, which
contains data on 9 billion possible changes to the human genetic code and estimates how these changes will affect different tissues and cellular processes. What's more, the tool spits out a simple score to help scientists quickly weigh the knock-on impacts of these changes.
How a sequence of 3 billion or so letters of chemical code is packaged, delivered and read to create a human life is a major question in genetics research. Last year, DeepMind announced a tool that could propel researchers toward an answer. The tool, called AlphaGenome, predicts how changes to a DNA sequence alter proteins, cells and, ultimately, the human experience.
Now, one year later, DeepMind has released AlphaGenome Atlas, which the tech giant hopes will make AlphaGenome accessible to more researchers.
"It looks like a great resource," Greg Findlay, a group leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London who isn't involved with AlphaGenome Atlas, told Live Science. However, other experts said that, although the tool is a step forward, it still can't answer all of the big questions in genetics.
"It's not this holy grail," Tuuli Lappalainen, a professor in genomics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and a senior associate faculty member at the New York Genome Center who isn’t involved with AlphaGenome Atlas, told Live Science.
Reading the future of genetic variants
Lappalainen's lab has been using AlphaGenome to study the effects of variation in genomes over the past year. She pointed out that this technology is not new. However, according to Google DeepMind, AlphaGenome outperforms previous models in the resolution at which it can predict the impact of changes to the genome. Around 98% of our DNA is noncoding, meaning cellular machinery doesn't directly read it to make the proteins that keep our cells functioning.
Geneticists now appreciate that this code, once thought to be "junk" DNA, is instead needed to manage how and when to read the parts of the genome that do encode our molecular building blocks, or coding genes. However, evolution hasn't produced an ordered genome. Instead, some regulatory instructions are distributed widely throughout the code.
AlphaGenome allowed researchers to explore how changes in a single pair of DNA "letters" could influence up to 1 million pairs of surrounding code — a far greater spread than previous models were capable of and one that captured much of each gene's regulatory network.
You really do not need to be an expert in these methods to be able to go there and look something up in a browser.
Tuuli Lappalainen, professor in genomics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and a senior associate faculty member at the New York Genome Center
But this power came at a price. Until the release of Atlas, AlphaGenome required users to have enough bioinformatics experience to access and use the models' automated programming interface — an area of expertise not all geneticists have. What's more, calculating the effects of each change was a strenuous workout for academics’ computing resources.
To create AlphaGenome Atlas, DeepMind researchers computed every possible base ("letter") change and made the resulting data — totaling 1 petabyte, or 1 million gigabytes, of information — freely available. This takes the load off academics' overworked personal computers. What's more, the technology is now wrapped up in an easy-to-access, user-friendly web portal.
"You really do not need to be an expert in these methods to be able to go there and look something up in a browser," Lappalainen said.
Another simplification is the AlphaGenome Variant Impact score, a metric that predicts how much biological effect a change will have. In an accompanying preprint paper, DeepMind showed that the score could separate disease-linked mutations from harmless ones in a clinical dataset. While the score's simplicity might make it harder to interpret in certain cases, Lappalainen said, it would be useful for researchers who want to investigate a list of gene variants.
Clouds in the crystal ball?
The tool still isn't a perfect predictor, however. A Sept. 11 preprint study from a research team led by Katie Pollard, director of the Gladstone Institute of Data Science and Biotechnology and a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, suggested that while AlphaGenome was adept at finding causal mutations, it persistently underestimated their impact.
Pollard's team found that the model couldn't always link changes in regulatory elements to the genes they controlled, especially when they were not close together on the genome. "My perhaps naive hope would be that people take these predictions with an appropriate grain of salt," Lappalainen said.
Despite these limitations, Lappalainen said advances like AlphaGenome Atlas are part of a wider move toward more collaborative, data-led genomics. But she warned that the field would need to give equal focus to "wet-lab" experiments, which work out the accuracy of variant predictions.
Although these tests are tedious and consume much more time than a search on AlphaGenome Atlas' interface, she said, they are essential for generating the data that AI models need to improve their predictions.
"We're still very much data-limited in biology, and that data needs to be created," Lappalainen said.
'> Google DeepMind's latest AI tool promises a new era for genetics research, but experts warn to take its predictions with caution
statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
Some of the hieroglyphic tablets found inside the fortress along with a tablet depicting a captured Libyan prisoner. (Image credit: Courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.)The fort, which was found at the archaeological site of Abqaa' in Egypt's Lake District, dates to the New Kingdom period (circa 1550 to 1070 B.C.) and was used to guard against hostile Libyan tribes to the west. Among the finds from the fort excavation was a tablet depicting a Libyan prisoner whose clothing signifies his membership in the Meshwesh tribe, a group that Egypt was often in conflict with.
The prisoner is shown with his hands bound behind his bent body, a posture that signifies his submission, the statement noted.
A hieroglyphic tablet with the name of pharaoh Ramesses II was also found; he reigned from about 1279 to 1213 B.C. A second tablet included the name of the pharaoh Merneptah, who reigned from about 1213 to 1203 B.C., and compared his strength to that of Seth, an ancient Egyptian god associated with the desert and storms.
"An amazing find"
The horse burial is a unique discovery, scholars not associated with the excavation told Live Science.
"It is an amazing find, simply because we have so few horse remains from Pharaonic Egypt," especially complete skeletons, Lonneke Delpeut, a researcher at the University of Vienna who has conducted extensive research into ancient Egyptian horses, told Live Science in an email.
Archaeologists have found the remains of horse stables, such as those at the ancient Egyptian capital of Pi-Ramesses, but horse remains have been scarce, Delpeut said. "This horse will therefore surely contribute to what we know about the use of horses in military forts, of which there are many in the region."
Part of the fort, which was in use during the New Kingdom period. (Image credit: Courtesy of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.)But Delpeut cautioned against definitively calling it a war horse, "mainly because we do not have a definition of what a war horse is in ancient Egypt," she said. "It was certainly a chariot horse. Horses revolutionised mobility and warfare in ancient Egypt, so this horse was without a doubt a valuable animal, reflected by its careful burial."
Carolyn Willekes, an expert on ancient horses at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Canada, told Live Science in an email that the discovery is exciting. "Well-preserved horse remains have the potential to provide important information about the life of that individual horse," she said. The "fact that this appears to be an intentional horse burial also gives tantalizing hints about the equine-human relationship in ancient Egypt and the cultural importance of the horse," Willekes said.
An archaeological team from the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities made the discovery. Live Science contacted the team for comment but had not heard back at time of publication.
Are you a fan of mummies and hieroglyphs? Find out with our ancient Egypt quiz!
'> 3,000-year-old burial of ancient Egyptian horse found — and a nearby stone carving depicts a captured prisoner
A complex mix of tectonic forces has built the Apennines and led to the formation of the two basins in the Mediterranean that lie east and west of the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. (Image credit: 1xpert via Getty Images with labels added)Along the Apennines, this process created a push-and-pull of forces. As the African plate subducted under the Eurasian plate, the boundary of the subduction zone was making its own march toward the African plate, causing the crust on the Eurasian side to stretch and thin, creating two large basins: an older one in the Mediterranean Sea west of Corsica and Sardinia, and a younger one, the Tyrrhenian Sea segment of the Mediterranean east of Corsica and Sardinia, which formed roughly 10 million years ago. Until now, the driver behind the extension creating these basins and the compressional forces building the Apennines has not been entirely clear, Tavani said.
To better understand this unusual tectonic movement, Tavani and his colleagues integrated earthquake record and ground movements from GPS and satellite measurements with the tectonic models of the plate movements and found that under the Apennines, the lower crust is peeling away and dropping into the mantle — a process called delamination. It is this delamination, and not the subduction of one plate under another, that causes most of the seismic activity in the Appennines, the researchers reported in their study published this month in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. In a few more million years, Tavani said, the lower crust will finish dropping away and the two plates will weld together.
There are other places around the world where similar processes are happening, such as in the Hellenic trench south of Greece, Tavani said. The findings "could be applied to other several systems," he said, "because in the end, it is a kind of very late-stage plate tectonics."
'> Earth's crust is 'unzipping' beneath Italy — and that could explain most of the earthquakes in the region
Curiosity rover has officially seen the sun rise and set over Mars' reddish horizon more than 5,000 times in its quest to discover if life ever existed there. The rover was originally planned to operate for only two years, but the mission is still going strong more than 14 years after landing on Mars in August 2012.
During that time, the rover has weathered global dust storms and climbed more than 3,200 feet (1,000 meters) up a mountain — although its tires have gotten some rather large holes in them in the process. The rover still uses its 17 cameras to take hundreds of photos every single sol (Martian day), beaming a total of more than 780,000 photos back to Earth for scientists to analyze while mission controllers decide where the rover should roam next.
In honor of the intrepid rover's 5,000th day on the Red Planet, here are 10 of the most iconic photos Curiosity has snapped for Earthlings to admire.
Sol 548: Mount Sharp on the horizon
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)Curiosity snapped this photo of Mount Sharp on Feb. 19, 2014, about a year and a half after it landed on Mars. At the time, scientists were hopeful the rover could make it to the base of the 3.4-mile-high (5.5 kilometers high) mountain to explore interesting terrain previously seen from space. As the years passed, Curiosity more than surpassed that goal; the rover has climbed more than half a mile up into the mountain's foothills, traveling a total of more than 23.6 miles (38 km) from its landing spot, all while conducting important science along the way.
Sol 956: Blue skies on Mars
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Texas A&M Univ)Curiosity took a photo of the Martian sunset in color for the first time on April 15, 2015, revealing a brilliant blue sky just before the sun dipped behind the shrouded mountains in the distance. The Martian sky is usually yellow to orange, according to NASA. Fine dust particles in the atmosphere scatter red and yellow light across the entire sky. However, the dust is just the right size for some blue light to slip past, so most of the light in the sky near the sun is blue. The effect is much more pronounced when the sun is low in the horizon.
Sol 1128: Curiosity Selfie at Namib Dune
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)Curiosity has taken numerous selfies over the course of its mission, although the process is a bit more involved than holding up a camera and smiling. This selfie was made from 57 separate images taken on Jan. 19, 2016 using a camera attached to its robotic arm. Here, Curiosity is standing next to Namib Dune, one of the many dark sand dunes that make up the Bagnold Dune Field near Mount Sharp. Curiosity sampled the sand for analysis and scuffed the dune with its wheels so scientists could see how the sand moved.
Sol 1819: Curiosity leaves a thumbprint in the dust
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)Mars is extremely dusty. The reddish dust gets swept into the atmosphere and cast across most of the planet's surface, making it difficult for scientists to figure out what materials are on the surface just by looking at them. On Sept. 17, 2017, Curiosity dusted off the surface of a rock at Vera Rubin Ridge and took a picture for geologists to compare to rocks on Earth. Based on the reddish purple color, geologists think this rock is fine-grained hematite split by fractures filled with calcium sulfate minerals. It hints that Mars might be a lot more colorful underneath its dusty blanket. Scientists have since discovered ruby-like materials embedded in Martian rocks.
Sol 3466: Totally not a door for aliens
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)On May 7, 2022, Curiosity sent a curious photo back to Earth that appears to show a small door carved into the face of a cliff. It's hard not to imagine little green people entering it after taking their little green dogs for a stroll across the dusty landscape, but it's not actually a doorway for Martians. The 3-foot-tall opening's boxy shape is caused by vertical fractures intersecting with horizontal layers in the rock, according to NASA. The cliff is highly fractured, and a large chunk of rock that likely fell from the "doorway" is clearly visible nearby.
Sol 3724: Iridescent feather in the sky
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)Just after the sun went down on Jan. 27, 2023, Curiosity took this photo of a noctilucent (night-shining) cloud that formed much higher in the Martian atmosphere than most other clouds do. Any clouds on Mars are rare, but this one is extra special. Since this cloud is so high up, it's much colder — making scientists think it's made of carbon dioxide (dry ice) instead of water ice. The iridescent colors in the cloud indicate the ice particles making up the cloud are all around the same size, which means the cloud likely just formed at the time of the photo.
Sol 3725: Curiosity finds "Cacao"
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)The very next day after cloud-gazing, on Jan. 28, 2023, Curiosity found an iron-nickel meteorite measuring about a foot across. The meteorite, nicknamed "Cacao," is one of a handful of meteorites Curiosity has photographed. The rover zapped part of the meteorite with a laser and measured the vapor released to identify what materials the rock was made of. Since Mars is cold and dry compared to Earth, meteorites last much longer on its surface than they do here, and they give clues about how the Martian atmosphere has changed over time. Large iron meteorites discovered on Mars indicate the planet once had a denser atmosphere than it does today.
Sol 4208: Elemental sulfur crystal surprise
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)In June 2024, Curiosity unintentionally ran over a rock and crushed it, revealing a yellow, odorless surprise: rare crystals of elemental sulfur. While Mars has plenty of minerals that contain sulfur, like sulfate, this was the first time pure sulfur was found. The crystal fragments are about 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) across. On Earth, pure sulfur is formed from volcanic and hydrothermal activity, along with other geologic processes. It's not clear yet how these crystals formed on Mars.
Sol 182 - 4263: All 42 drill samples
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)Curiosity has collected and analyzed 42 rock samples so far using a small drill attached to a robotic arm. The drill powders the rock so that the samples can be transported to Curiosity's science instruments, which measure their chemical composition. Each sample site is carefully chosen because the rover can only do a limited number of samples before it runs out of special sample cups. This mosaic image shows the impressive variety of materials that Curiosity has sunk its drill into.
Sol 4671: Exploring Martian spiderwebs
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)Researchers have been intrigued by large geologic structures like stone "spiderwebs" on the Martian surface, previously seen by spacecraft orbiting the planet. Curiosity visited them on the ground, taking this picture of the low ridges and hollows, called boxwork, on Sept. 26, 2025. The ridges, made from hardened minerals deposited by water seeping into cracked rock, are what's left after billions of years of erosion wore away the softer rock around them.
Curiosity's journey continues today. After leaving the boxwork structures last March, the rover set off to explore more of the Martian landscape with its cameras as busy as ever, looking for more evidence that Mars once had the water and chemistry to possibly support ancient microbial life.
What do you know about the Red Planet? Test your knowledge with our Mars quiz!
'> Curiosity's top 10 photos of Mars after 5,000 days of exploration
Dr. Meghana Tanwar, a medical consultant at the Aravind Eye Hospital in India who co-authored a
report of the case. The texture and color of the projections suggested they might be teeth, she told Live Science in an email.
Initially, the doctors thought the points also might have been related to a teratoma, a rare type of tumor that can include different types of tissue, including bone and tooth tissue. They also wondered if the projections might be a foreign body in the eyelid. They conducted a CT scan to take a closer look.
The diagnosis: The scan revealed that the projections were indeed part of a tooth.
"The structure of a lone tooth in the superior orbit was quite obvious," Tanwar said. "Superior orbit" refers to the upper eye socket, and the tooth had poked out in the small space between the boy's eyelid and eyebrow.
Teeth that develop and erupt in abnormal locations are known as ectopic teeth. This umbrella term includes teeth that are in the mouth but erupt outside their typical positions; for instance, in about 2% to 6% of people, their first permanent molars grow "out of place" in the expected line-up of teeth.
In this case, though, the patient had an ectopic tooth that appeared completely outside the dental arch, which is far rarer.
The treatment: The doctors surgically removed the ectopic tooth from the patient's eyelid and found that it was a mature canine tooth. It didn't have any features that suggested it was part of a teratoma.
"Since the imaging done did not show the presence of any other ectopic teeth, the likelihood of him having another one are unlikely," Tanwar noted.
What makes the case unique: This is not the first ectopic tooth in the medical literature, but it was in a very notable location.
"To the best of our knowledge this is the first and only ectopic tooth reported in the superior orbit," Tanwar said. Previously, they've been reported in the nasal cavity and the bottom of the orbit, under the eye, she noted. According to MedPage Today, they've also been found in the nostrils, chin and maxillary sinus, which is located inside the cheekbone.
"This was a first not just for us but the world over," Tanwar said of the case. "We were very surprised by it."
Prior to the case, Tanwar had personally seen a tooth in the bottom of the eye socket of a different patient, but it was part of a rare type of mass called an odontogenic choristoma.
In this teen's case, the underlying cause of the ectopic tooth was unknown. Hypotheses suggest that, in general, ectopic teeth may grow out of place due to developmental disorders, physical trauma, infection or genetic factors.
For more intriguing medical cases, check out our Diagnostic Dilemma archives.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not meant to offer medical advice.
'> Weird spikes poking through a teen's eyelid turned out to be a wayward tooth