Three scientists win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for groundbreaking work in the field of proteins

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for their groundbreaking work in predicting and designing the structure of proteins, the building blocks of life.

Heiner Linke, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said the prize honors research that links amino acid sequence and protein structure.

“For decades this was considered a major challenge in chemistry, and especially in biochemistry. So it is that breakthrough that is being rewarded 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 could be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and small sensors, the Nobel committee said.

“The number of designs they have, produced and published, and… the variety is absolutely staggering. It seems that you can construct almost any type of protein with this technology,” says Professor Johan Åqvist of the Nobel Committee.

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Hassabis and Jumper created an artificial intelligence model that has been able to predict the structure of virtually all of the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified, the committee added.

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Linke said scientists have long dreamed 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 have made it possible to predict the complex structure of virtually every known protein in nature,” said Linke.

“Another dream of scientists is 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 allow scientists to design spectacular new proteins with entirely new shapes and functions, opening endless possibilities with the greatest benefit to humanity.”

Last year the chemistry prize went to three scientists for their work on quantum dots – tiny particles just a few nanometers in diameter that can emit very bright colored light and whose applications in everyday life include electronics and medical imaging.

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Six days of Nobel Prize announcements began Monday when Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun won the medicine prize. Two founders of machine learning – John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton – won the physics prize.

The awards continue on Thursday with the literature prize. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics prize on October 14.

The prize comes with a cash prize of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million), from a legacy left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.

Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands.

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