The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on Wednesday, that three scientists will receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The winners were David Baker, who received half of the prize for his invention of “computational protein design”, and Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, who shared the other half for their development of the technique of “predicting protein structures”.
The committee said in its statement: “The three scientists succeeded in unravelling the mysteries of proteins with their amazing structures. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was centred on those ingenious chemical tools on which life is based.”
David Baker, one of the laureates of the prize, succeeded in achieving a unique, almost impossible feat, which is the invention of completely new types of proteins. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, who share the prize with Baker, have developed an AI model that has solved a 50-year-old problem: predicting the complex structures of proteins. These discoveries hold enormous potential.
It is no exaggeration to describe proteins as amazing chemical tools. They are generally made up of twenty amino acids that can be combined and combined in countless ways; they link together to form long chains according to the information stored in DNA, which acts as a blueprint for how these acids should be linked. This is where the magic of proteins lies; these chains of amino acids then fold and fold into distinct, sometimes unique, three-dimensional structures. These structures are what give proteins their functions.
The committee said: “The potential of these twenty amino acids, the building blocks of life, is truly enormous; so vast that any words that can be said to appreciate their importance are insignificant. That is why this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to attempts to understand their role and master their control in a way that has never been done before in human history.”
