Protein and Drug: How to Speed Up the Search 26-Fold
Searching for a new drug is like matching a key to a lock. The protein in a cell is the lock, and the candidate molecule is the key. You need to know whether the key fits and how snugly it sits. Previously, the computer would examine every atom in the lock and the key to check this. A single lock could take hours or even days. Checking millions of keys was out of the question.