Baker, Hassabis, Jumper win Nobel Prize in Chemistry with protein research

Research on computational protein design and protein structure prediction has won three scientists the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the prize on Wednesday, with one half to David Baker “for computational protein design” and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper “for protein structure prediction.”

David Baker’s most cited study explores new neural network architectures for accurately predicting protein structures from amino acid sequences.

Read also: America’s Ambros, Ruvkun win 2024 Nobel Prize in Medicine

It analyses the problem of predicting the 3D structure of proteins based on their amino acid sequence, a key problem in biology as understanding a protein’s structure can help understand its function.

By experimentation, determining a protein’s structure has proven to be a slow and difficult process.

However, Baker’s work introduces a new computational method called AlphaFold that can accurately predict protein structures.

Demis Hassabis and John Jumper’s most renowned research addressed predicting the 3D structure of proteins based on their amino acid sequence.

According to the committee, Hassabis and Jumper created an artificial intelligence model that can predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins researchers identified.

Last year, the award went to three scientists for their work on quantum dots, tiny particles that can release very bright coloured light and have applications in everyday life, including electronics and medical imaging.

The six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize.

Read also: Claudia Goldin becomes third woman ever to win Nobel Prize in Economics

Two founding fathers of machine learning, John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, won the physics prize.

The awards continue with the literature prize on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the Economics Award next Monday.

The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor (nearly €1 million) from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel.

The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.