By ibm.com
Publication Date: 2026-03-23 12:00:00
Blog summary:
- A joint Cleveland Clinic-IBM research team simulated the electronic structure the 303-atom miniprotein Trp-cage.
- Accurate electronic structure calculations on classical computers become increasingly challenging as system size increases. A workable quantum approach could unlock a range of industry applications.
- The method involves breaking the molecule into clusters, and using quantum compute to simulate the most complex clusters.
- In principle, the hybrid workflow can scale far beyond Trp-cage.
- Already, researchers are exploring what the next step looks like, eyeing even larger molecules as their targets.
For the first time, researchers have used quantum computing to simulate the electronic structure of a protein—a demonstration made possible thanks to novel quantum-centric supercomputing (QCSC) research.
A joint Cleveland Clinic-IBM research team modeled the 303-atom miniprotein Trp-cage using a quantum-centric supercomputing workflow and an IBM Quantum Heron r2….
