Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded for unlocking the secrets of proteins

The winners of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry are David Baker for computational protein design and Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper for an AI model to predict protein structure. The prize is worth 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million at the time of publication). Half of that goes to Baker and the other half is shared between Hassabis and Jumper.

Proteins are the building blocks of life and are not just important for building muscle in athletes – they are also crucial for biological functions. Examples of proteins include hormones, enzymes and antibodies. Proteins help build the various tissues in our body and allow our body to work.

Proteins are chains of smaller molecules called amino acids. There are hundreds of amino acids in nature, but life on Earth requires 20. Thanks to different arrangements in the amino acid chains and variations in folding, proteins come in a wide variety of shapes and functions, and the Nobel Prize this year recognizes related ones Discoveries on two aspects of it.

In 2003, David Baker and his team were the first to develop a completely new protein that was second to none. This has led to the development of ever new proteins that have applications in drug development, vaccines and even tiny sensors.

The other half of the award focuses on understanding how a set of amino acids gives rise to specific protein structures in the first place. A search that began in the 1970s was finally solved four years ago when the Google DeepMind team used AI – which also helped two scientists win the Nobel Prize in Physics this year – to understand how the three-dimensional structure of proteins arises.

Using the AlphaFold2 machine learning machine, Hassabis, Jumper and their team were able to predict the structure of virtually all 200 million known proteins. Over two million people have used the AI ​​model, leading to applications ranging from combating antibiotic resistance to developing enzymes that can break down plastic.

“One of the discoveries honored this year concerns the construction of spectacular proteins. The other is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures based on their amino acid sequences. Both discoveries open up enormous possibilities,” Heiner Linke, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said in a statement.