The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced on the 9th that the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry will be awarded to David Beck from the University of Washington, Seattle, as well as Demis Hasabis and John Kemper from Google's Deep Thinking company, in recognition of their efforts to decipher the code behind the magical structure of proteins.
Hans Ellegren, the Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announced the list of winners and their main achievements in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences conference hall on the same day. He announced that half of the award would be awarded to Baker in recognition of his contributions to computational protein design. The other half was awarded to Hassabis and Jumper in recognition of their contributions to protein structure prediction.
Proteins are the cornerstone of life, typically composed of 20 different amino acids. The Chairman of the Nobel Committee on Chemistry, Heiner Link, pointed out that the two discoveries recognized by the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry have opened up infinite possibilities in the field of biochemistry. Among them, Baker successfully accomplished an almost impossible feat, constructing a completely new type of protein. Hassabis and Jumper have achieved a 50 year dream of predicting the complex structure of proteins through artificial intelligence models.
Baker was born in Seattle, USA in 1962 and received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989. He is currently a professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. Hassabis was born in London, UK in 1976 and obtained a PhD from University College London in 2009. He is currently the CEO of Deep Thinking. Jumper was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA in 1985. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago in 2017 and is currently a senior research scientist in the field of “deep thinking”.
Baker said in a phone interview that day that he received this honor by standing on the shoulders of giants. Protein structure prediction truly highlights the power of artificial intelligence, enabling people to apply AI methods to protein design, greatly improving the ability and accuracy of design.
Two of the three Nobel Prizes in Science this year are related to artificial intelligence. Previously, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to scientists who made fundamental discoveries and inventions in machine learning using artificial neural networks. One of the Nobel Committee member said on the same day that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry focuses on “discoveries” and “revolutionary progress” in the field of chemistry. Thanks to this year's award-winning achievements, people can now design proteins and predict protein three-dimensional structures through artificial intelligence, which is a very big revolution.
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The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is awarded to scientists who have made outstanding achievements in the fields of computational protein design and protein structure prediction. This breakthrough has had a profound impact on the practical applications of bioinformatics and metagenomics. Nobel laureates have demonstrated the ability to predict complex protein structures through artificial intelligence and computing tools, enabling us to design novel proteins and develop revolutionary products for medicinal, vaccine, nanomaterial, and sensor applications.
By integrating these technologies into our services, Creative Enzymes can accelerate the product development process without sacrificing quality and accuracy. For example, with the help of David Baker's program and technologies such as AlphaFold2, customers can quickly and accurately find new proteins that suit their specific needs.
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