Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded to three scientists for their work on proteins – Xinhua

(Xinhua/Peng Ziyang)

STOCKHOLM, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) — The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been jointly awarded to David Baker for “computational protein design” and the duo Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for “protein structure prediction”, a announced the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences on Wednesday.

Mr Baker is based at the University of Washington in Seattle, while the other two winners conduct their research at Google DeepMind in London.

“One of the discoveries awarded this year concerns the construction of spectacular proteins. The other involves realizing a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures from amino acid sequences,” commented Heiner Linke, President of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

David Baker’s work in 2003 led to the design of a new protein from amino acids, which are the building blocks of life. His team’s innovative protein creations have since been applied to pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and sensors.

“He developed computational tools that today allow scientists to design spectacular new proteins with entirely new shapes and functions, opening up infinite possibilities for the greatest benefit of humanity,” praised Mr. Linke.

The second recognized discovery, an artificial intelligence model called AlphaFold2, was presented by MM. Hassabis and Jumper in 2020. AlphaFold2 can predict the structure of nearly 200 million identified proteins, advancing research in areas such as antibiotic resistance. END

(Xinhua/Peng Ziyang)