2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Context:

Recently, The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was jointly awarded to David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John Jumper for their contributions to protein structure research.

Relevance:

GS-03 (Science and technology)

Highlights:

David Baker was honored for his work in computational protein design. He led a team in 2003 that developed new proteins using custom software, enabling the creation of designer proteins tailored for specific applications.
Demis Hassabis and John Jumper were awarded for their role in developing AlphaFold 2, an AI-based model that can predict the structures of millions of proteins. This achievement drastically improved upon previous methods, which had only determined around 1.7 lakh protein structures through human effort.
AlphaFold’s ability to predict the complex structures of proteins revolutionized the field of molecular biology and has broad implications for drug discovery and disease understanding.
Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, emphasized how these discoveries bridged the gap between a protein’s amino acid sequence and its structure.
The 2024 Chemistry Prize is notable for being awarded relatively soon after the corresponding work (4-6 years) compared to the typical gap of decades.
This prize also highlights a continuing trend of non-chemists winning in this category, showcasing the broad influence of chemistry across scientific disciplines.