The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to the American David Baker and to a tandem formed by the British Demis Hassabis and the American John Jumper, for having unlocked the secrets of proteins, relying on artificial intelligence and computer science.
The jury praised these researchers who succeeded “in deciphering the code of astonishing protein structures” and their discoveries “offer enormous potential”.
David Baker, a 62-year-old biochemist, was awarded “for computational protein design,” while Demis Hassabis and John Jumper were awarded for their work on “protein structure prediction” via artificial intelligence ( IA), according to the press release.
“One of the discoveries awarded this year concerns the spectacular construction of proteins. The other is realizing a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structure from amino acid sequences. These two discoveries open up vast perspectives,” summarized Heiner Linke, president of the Nobel committee.
David Baker “achieved the almost impossible feat of constructing entirely new proteins,” explains the jury. Proteins are generally made up of 20 different amino acids. In 2003, he succeeded, “from these constituent elements of life” in forming a new protein different from all existing ones.
Questioned by the Nobel jury, Mr. Baker said he was “very enthusiastic and very honored.” “I was sleeping when the phone rang, I picked it up and heard the announcement, then my wife started screaming.”
For their part, Demis Hassabis, aged 48, and John Jumper, born in 1985, run Google DeepMind and in 2020 developed an AI model called AlphaFold2 to determine the structure of proteins.
“Since the 1970s, researchers have tried to predict the structures of proteins from their amino acids, but this task was notoriously difficult,” underlines the jury.
“With the help of this AI, they managed to predict the structure of almost all of the 200 million proteins identified by the researchers,” he adds.
Computational biology
The two men, cited among the favorites, had already received the prestigious Lasker Prize in 2023.
“I was stunned and blank for a few minutes,” Mr. Hassabis told the TT agency.
Of their work with John Jumper, he said that “it has been a real challenge for computational biology.”
“We used all modern machine learning techniques and known structures discovered over the last 50 years, and we managed to build a system capable of folding and finding the structure of virtually every protein known to science” , he added.
Awarded since 1901, the Nobel Prizes recognize people who have worked for “the benefit of humanity”, in accordance with the wish of their creator, the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.
Last year, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to a trio for their research on nanoparticles called quantum dots: Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov, born respectively in France, the United States and the USSR.
These very small components of nanotechnology now diffuse light from TVs and LEDs and can also guide surgeons when removing tumor tissue.
As with other Nobels, the chemistry prize has been criticized for its lack of diversity and equality. Since 1901, only eight women have been crowned, out of 114 winners.
The season continues with the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday and the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in Oslo.
The Nobel Prize in Economics, awarded for the first time in 1969, will be awarded on Monday October 14.
For the winners of the 2024 vintage, the check accompanying the prize is for eleven million crowns (920,000 euros), to be shared in the event of multiple winners.
