Nobel Prize in chemistry awarded to David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John
Jumper for work on proteins
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[October 09, 2024]
By DANIEL NIEMANN and MIKE CORDER
STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday to
David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for their breakthrough work
predicting and designing the structure of proteins, the building blocks
of life.
Heiner Linke, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said the award
honored research that made connections between amino acid sequence and
protein structure.
“That was actually called a grand challenge in chemistry, and in
particular in biochemistry, for decades. So, it’s that breakthrough that
gets awarded today,” he said.
Baker works at the University of Washington in Seattle, while Hassabis
and Jumper both work at Google Deepmind in London.
Baker designed a new protein in 2003 and his research group has since
produced one imaginative protein creation after another, including
proteins that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials
and tiny sensors, the Nobel committee said.
“The number of designs that they have, produced and published, and ...
the variety is absolutely mind blowing. It seems that you can almost
construct any type of protein with this technology,” said Professor
Johan Åqvist of the Nobel committee.
Hassabis and Jumper created an artificial intelligence model that has
been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million
proteins that researchers have identified, the committee added.
Linke said scientists had long dreamt of predicting the
three-dimensional structure of proteins.
“Four years ago in 2020, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper managed to crack
the code. With skillful use of artificial intelligence, they made it
possible to predict the complex structure of essentially any known
protein in nature,” Linke said.
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Johan Åqvist, member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, Hans
Ellegren, Permanent Secretary and Heiner Linke, Chairman of the
Nobel Committee for Chemistry award this years Nobel Prize in
Chemistry to David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John M Jumper at the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, in Stockholm, Sweden, Wednesday,
Oct. 9, 2024. (Christine Olsson/TT News Agency via AP)
“Another dream of scientists has been to build new proteins to learn
how to use nature’s multi-tool for our own purposes. This is the
problem that David Baker solved," he added. "He developed
computational tools that now enable scientists to design spectacular
new proteins with entirely novel shapes and functions, opening
endless possibilities for the greatest benefit to humankind.”
Last year, the chemistry award went to three scientists for their
work on quantum dots — tiny particles just a few nanometers in
diameter that can release very bright colored light and whose
applications in everyday life include electronics and medical
imaging.
Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor
Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize. 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 Friday and the economics award on Oct.
14.
The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($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 Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
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Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands.
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