2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry: Breakthroughs in Protein Design and Structure Prediction

Two scientists from Google DeepMind, as well as Washington University professor David Baker, will take home the Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded for this year to this winner for their work on protein design and structure.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences resolved to award the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry to one half to David Baker 'for computational protein design' and the other half is shared between Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper 'for protein structure prediction,.

Demis Hassabis is currently working as CEO at Google DeepMind, UK, and John M. Jumper is the Google DeepMind research scientist.

While Baker of US somehow had managed to attack the nearly impossible task of having built entirely new proteins, Hassabis and Jumper from UK have developed an AI model for solving a 50-year old problem over predicting proteins' complicated structure.

"One of the discoveries to be recognized this year is building spectacular proteins. The other is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences. Both of these discoveries open up vast possibilities," said Heiner Linke, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

In 2003, Baker became the first to use 20 different amino acids to design a novel protein. His research team has since then produced one imaginative protein creation after another-including proteins that might be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials, and miniature sensors.

Researchers have been trying to predict protein structures from amino acid sequences since the 1970s with notorious difficulty. However, in 2020, Hassabis and Jumper came up with an AI model referred to as AlphaFold2. AlphaFold2 - applied to date by over two million users from 190 countries - allowed them to predict the structure of nearly every one of the two hundred million proteins that scientists have cataloged. A better understanding of antibiotic resistance was brought in, and images of enzymes capable of breaking down plastic were produced. Enormous potential", says the Academy. Baker will get half of 11 million Swedish kronor, or 1.1 million dollars. The other half has to be divided between Hassabis and Jumper.