Australian BioCommons Structural Biology Platform
Molecular biology is amidst a structural revolution enabled by transformative AI models for molecular structure prediction and design. These technologies have been recognised with the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024 and continue to drive innovations across the life sciences.
However, making effective use of these tools requires interdisciplinary understanding of the underlying technology, access to specialised high performance computing (HPC) infrastructure and installation of complex software dependencies which creates significant access barriers for Australian life scientists.
In 2025, the Australian Structural Biology Computing community published a national infrastructure roadmap which outlined these challenges and proposed to leverage national-scale infrastructure and expertise via a shared computing platform.
In response to this roadmap, Australian BioCommons has partnered with UNSW, University of Sydney and National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) to develop the Australian BioCommons Structural Biology Platform. This has been co-designed with the national community.
This browser-based platform will unlock new capabilities for Australian researchers by supporting high-throughput workflows for molecular structure prediction and design using state-of-the-art tools including AlphaFold2, Boltz-2, RFDiffusion and BindCraft, with more tools to be added over time.
By providing a simple-to-use, interactive interface where users can execute workflows using sponsored computing resources, researchers will be empowered to focus on scientific problems rather than complex infrastructure challenges.
The platform is scheduled for a soft release to invited users early in Q4 2026 before a public launch in Q1 2027.
To receive any further updates you can visit the Australian Structural Biology Computing community website to join the mailing list, attend community meetings and more.
Partners
Australian BioCommons partners with the University of Melbourne, UNSW Sydney, Sydney Informatics Hub, University of Sydney and National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) to develop the Australian BioCommons Structural Biology Platform. These efforts are enabled by NCRIS via funding from Bioplatforms Australia.
