US scientist receives Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded Wednesday to David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for their groundbreaking work in predicting and designing protein structures, the essential building blocks of life.

Heiner Linke, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said the award recognized research that made connections between amino acid sequences and protein structures. “This has been described as a major challenge in chemistry and particularly in biochemistry for decades. That is why it is this breakthrough that is being recognized today,” he said.

Baker is affiliated with the University of Washington in Seattle, while Hassabis and Jumper are both researchers at Google DeepMind in London. Baker designed a novel protein in 2003 and his research team has since produced numerous innovative protein creations. According to the Nobel Committee, these include proteins that serve as medicines, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors.

“The number of designs they have produced and released and… the variety is absolutely overwhelming. It seems that with this technology you can construct almost any type of protein,” said Professor Johan Åqvist from the Nobel Committee.

Hassabis and Jumper developed an artificial intelligence model capable of predicting the structure of almost all 200 million proteins identified by researchers. Linke noted that scientists have long sought to predict the three-dimensional structures of proteins. “Four years ago, in 2020, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper managed to crack the code. “By cleverly using artificial intelligence, they made it possible to predict the complex structure of virtually every known protein in nature,” Linke noted.

“Another dream of scientists was to build new proteins to learn how to use nature's multitool for our own purposes. This is the problem that David Baker solved,” he continued. “He developed computational tools that now enable scientists to design spectacular new proteins with entirely novel shapes and functions, opening up endless possibilities for the greatest benefit of humanity.”

Last year's chemistry prize was awarded to three scientists for their research into quantum dots, tiny particles just a few nanometers in diameter that emit bright colored light and have applications in electronics and medical imaging.

The announcement of this year's Nobel Prize ceremony began on Monday with the awarding of the medicine prize to Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun. The founders of machine learning – John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton – were awarded the physics prize. It continues with the awarding of the literary prize on Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday and the economics prize on October 14th.

The prize includes a cash award of 11 million Swedish kroner (approximately $1 million) from a bequest from the award's creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. Laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.

This article contains reporting from The Associated Press