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雅思阅读-074-deepmind-alphagenome-atlas改编自-scientific-american-带音频

ielts 👁 12 · 💬 0 · 📅 2026-09-14
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雅思阅读 074 — Google DeepMind's AlphaGenome Atlas

改编自 Scientific American（2026-09，Mary Randolph & Peter Hall）。

🎧 课文朗读音频（约 1 分半）

Reading Passage

Atlases have long helped humans navigate unfamiliar terrain. And now a new atlas from Google DeepMind aims to better map the terrain of our biology: the human genome.

On Tuesday the company released AlphaGenome Atlas, a database that charts predictions of the possible effects of nine billion single variants in the human genome.

The database is based on AlphaGenome, a DeepMind artificial intelligence model released last year that analyses stretches of noncoding DNA, which primarily regulates gene activity. The model then predicts how much those variants affect molecular function. With the new atlas, all that analysis has been done ahead of time, and researchers can search for any DNA variant to see its predicted effects down to the level of specific tissues.

"This represents the first time that any researcher in the world can access a comprehensive map of the human genome and its variations by simply opening a browser," said Pushmeet Kohli, vice president of science at Google DeepMind.

Researchers have long been puzzled by the intricacies of the genome, especially noncoding DNA — the 98 per cent of DNA that does not code for specific proteins but still plays a major role in the body's function. AlphaMissense, another DeepMind tool, makes predictions for coding DNA, or the genes that make proteins. The new atlas covers everything else and contains a whopping petabyte of data — a quadrillion bytes.

Single variants in coding DNA can cause diseases such as Tay-Sachs and sickle cell anaemia. Noncoding DNA variants have also been linked to some types of cancer. To trace these mutations, researchers typically must painstakingly search through billions of data points for signals, but AlphaGenome Atlas could offload a lot of that work.

"Our own workflows in the lab can be streamlined quite a bit because we don't actually have to compute anything," says Jonathan Sebat, a psychiatric geneticist at the University of California, San Diego. "We literally can just look up everything."

In some ways, the atlas acts as a successor to the database for AlphaFold, an earlier DeepMind project that effectively solved the protein prediction problem, winning then DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis a share of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. AlphaGenome Atlas focuses on DNA — the instructions to make proteins and regulate their function — not proteins themselves. The new atlas is also 30 times larger than AlphaFold's database, although it is far less accurate.

The new atlas gives genetic variants a so-called AlphaGenome Variant Impact (AVI) score. The measure combines the AlphaGenome and AlphaMissense predictions and ranks each variant by how much it affects function.

"If somebody is studying a disease and they don't have any idea about what cell types to look for, then starting with an AVI score is a great starting point to help you prioritise variants and try to find that needle in the haystack," says Žiga Avsec, genomics lead at Google DeepMind.

While AlphaFold's database was free to use, commercial users such as drugmakers will have to license AlphaGenome Atlas.

Questions

Questions 1–5: TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN

  1. AlphaGenome Atlas predicts the effects of nine billion single DNA variants.
  2. Noncoding DNA makes up about 98% of the human genome.
  3. AlphaMissense predicts the effects of noncoding DNA variants.
  4. AlphaGenome Atlas is smaller than AlphaFold's database.
  5. AlphaGenome Atlas is completely free for commercial use.

Questions 6–10: Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

  1. What does AlphaGenome primarily analyse?

    • A. Protein structures
    • Noncoding DNA
    • Blood cells
    • Brain tissue

  2. How much data does the atlas contain?

    • A. One terabyte
    • One petabyte
    • One gigabyte
    • One exabyte

  3. AlphaFold won Demis Hassabis a share of the 2024 Nobel Prize in

    • A. Medicine
    • B. Physics
    • C. Chemistry
    • D. Literature

  4. The AVI score combines predictions from

    • A. AlphaFold and AlphaGenome
    • B. AlphaGenome and AlphaMissense
    • C. AlphaMissense and AlphaFold
    • D. AlphaFold and AlphaFold 2

  5. Who will have to license AlphaGenome Atlas?

    • A. Academic researchers
    • Students
    • Commercial users such as drugmakers
    • Government agencies

Questions 11–13: Complete the sentences. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS.

  1. Noncoding DNA primarily regulates __________ activity.
  2. The atlas contains a petabyte of data — a __________ bytes.
  3. Single-letter changes in the genome are called __________ variants.

Answers

  1. TRUE
  2. TRUE
  3. FALSE (AlphaMissense预测的是编码DNA)
  4. FALSE (比AlphaFold大30倍)
  5. FALSE (商业用户需要授权)
  6. B
  7. B
  8. C
  9. B
  10. C
  11. gene
  12. quadrillion
  13. single

Glossary

  • genome /ˈdʒiːnəʊm/ n. 基因组
  • noncoding DNA 非编码DNA
  • variant /ˈveəriənt/ n. 变异
  • mutation /mjuːˈteɪʃn/ n. 突变
  • coding DNA 编码DNA
  • petabyte /ˈpetəbaɪt/ n. 拍字节
  • streamline /ˈstriːmlaɪn/ v. 简化
  • license /ˈlaɪsns/ v. 授权
  • tissue /ˈtɪʃuː/ n. 组织

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