Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on proteins awarded to David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper

CNN
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The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to a trio of scientists who used artificial intelligence to “crack the code” of almost all known proteins, the “chemical tools of life.”

The Nobel Committee praised David Baker, a US biochemist, for “achieving the almost impossible feat of building entirely new types of proteins” and Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, who work at Google DeepMind in London, for the development an AI model to predict proteins “Complex structures – a problem that has been unsolved for 50 years.”

“The potential of their discoveries is enormous,” the committee said when announcing the award in Sweden on Wednesday. The prize is considered the pinnacle of scientific achievement and is worth 11 million Swedish crowns (US$1 million).

Proteins, a series of amino acid molecules, are the building blocks of life. They help form hair, skin and tissue cells; they read, copy and repair DNA; and they help transport oxygen in the blood.

While proteins only consist of about 20 amino acids, these can be combined in almost endless ways and fold into highly complex patterns in three-dimensional space.

The committee said Wednesday's award was made up of two “halves.” The first went to Hassabis, a British computer scientist who is the co-founder of Google's AI research lab DeepMind, and Jumper, an American researcher who also works at DeepMind.

Hassabis and Jumper were honored for using AI to predict the three-dimensional structure of a protein from an amino acid sequence, allowing them to predict the structure of almost all 200 million known proteins.

“It's really a breakthrough in its own right that solves a traditional holy grail in physical chemistry,” Anna Wedell, a professor of medical genetics at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, told CNN.

Their AI program – the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database – has been used by at least 2 million researchers around the world. It acts as a “Google search” for protein structures, providing instant access to predicted protein models and accelerating progress in fundamental biology and other related fields. The pair have already won the 2023 Lasker and Breakthrough Prizes.

“They made everything public, so now more or less every area can access this database and use these tools to address their specific problem. So it has enabled advances in many, many different areas,” said Wedell, who uses the tool in her own work in rare diseases.

Since the pair's key paper was published in 2021, it has been cited more than 16,000 times. David Pendlebury, head of research analysis at the Clarivate Institute for Scientific Information, described it as “unprecedented and reflects the revolutionary impact of this work.” Of a total of 61 million scientific papers, only about 500 have been cited more than 10,000 times, he told CNN.

Before moving on to proteins, the duo worked on a computer program that could compete with the world's best players of the ancient Chinese board game Go.

According to the Royal Society, the world's oldest scientific society, of which he is a member, Hassabis also programmed the classic chess video “Theme Park” at the age of 17.

“Today’s prize, so soon after AlphaFold’s potential was first revealed, is a clear recognition of the transformative role of AI in science,” said Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society.

“Demis is not only one of the most groundbreaking researchers in the field, but has also championed the vision of AI as an enabler that can address the grand challenges of science and bring benefits to all of society,” he added in a statement added.

The second “half” of the prize went to Baker, a professor at the University of Washington who used computer-aided methods to create proteins that did not exist before and that have completely new functions.

Johan Aqvist, a member of the Nobel Committee, said Baker first used his computer program to “draw protein structures in new dimensions” and then “figure out what amino acid sequence would make that structure.” This allowed Baker to create these new proteins, “most of which had never been seen before and did not exist in nature.”

He said the variety of proteins Baker created was “absolutely mind-boggling.”

“It seems that you can now make almost any type of protein with this technology,” Aqvist said.

The committee said the ability to engineer new proteins offers a wide range of potential uses, from developing new drugs to accelerating the development of new vaccines.

Wednesday's chemistry prize ceremony reinforced the enormous influence of AI in science.

The Nobel Prize in Physics, awarded Tuesday, was shared by Geoffrey Hinton, dubbed the “Godfather of AI,” and John Hopfield for their work on artificial neural networks – the same technology that underpinned the work of the new chemistry laureates.

“The Nobel Foundation’s selection of laureates in physics and chemistry this year can only be described as courageous,” said Pendlebury. “The recognition of AI’s transformative role in research in two consecutive categories is unprecedented.”

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