How to cite AlphaFold

Please always credit AlphaFold2 when you use results derived from it. Depending on exactly how you use AlphaFold2, there are different papers to cite.

If you’re using AlphaFold2 in any way, please cite:

• Jumper, J. et al. “Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold.” Nature, 596, pages 583–589 (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2

If you’re using the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database (AFDB), please also cite:

• Varadi, M. et al. “AlphaFold Protein Structure Database in 2024: Providing structure coverage for over 214 million protein sequences.” Nucleic Acids Research, gkad1011 (2023). DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkad1011
• Varadi, M. et al. “AlphaFold Protein Structure Database: massively expanding the structural coverage of protein-sequence space with high-accuracy models.” Nucleic Acids Research, 50(D1), pages D439–D444 (2021). DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkab1061

If you’re using AlphaFold-Multimer, please also cite:

• Evans, R. et al. “Protein complex prediction with AlphaFold-Multimer.” bioRxiv (2021). DOI: 10.1101/2021.10.04.463034v1

If you’re using ColabFold, please also cite:

• Mirdita, M. et al. “ColabFold: Making protein folding accessible to all.” Nature Methods, 19, pages 679–682 (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41592-022-01488-1

If you’re using the 3D-Beacons Network, please also cite:

• Varadi, M. et al. “3D-Beacons: decreasing the gap between protein sequences and structures through a federated network of protein structure data resources.” GigaScience, 11, giac118 (2022). DOI: 10.1093/gigascience/giac118

If you’re using another piece of software that integrates AlphaFold2:

• Please follow the citation instructions given by the software providers.