The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Da🗹vid Baker “for computational protein design” and Demis Ha🐼ssabis and John M. Jumper “for protein structure prediction.”
Proteins generally consist of 20 different amino acﷺids, which can be described as life’s building blocks and David Baker 🎉in 2003 succeeded in using these blocks to design a new protein that was unlike any other protein, according to a press release.
"Since then, his research gro❀up has produced one imaginative protein creation after another, including proteins that can be used as pharmaceu𒁃ticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors," the release said.
T🍎he second Nobel Prize-winning discovery pertai🗹ns to the prediction of protein structures, the release said.
In proteins, amino acids are linked together in long strings that fold up to make a three-dimensional structure, which is decisive for the protein’s fun🔯ction, the release said, adding that since the 1970s, researchers had tried to predict protein structures from amino acid sequences, but this was notoriously difficult.
Four years ago, there was a bre𓄧akthrough. Courtesy, Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper.
In 2020, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper presented an AI [Artificial Intelligence] model called AlphaꩵFol൲d2 which helped them predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified, the release said.
"Since their breakthrough, AlphaFold2 has been used by more than two million people from 190 countries. Among a myriad of scientific applications, resear🃏chers can now better understand antibiotic resistance and create images of enzymes that can decompose plastic," it adꦆded.
"Life could not exist without proteins. That we can now predict prot😼ein structures and design our own proteins confers the greatest benefit to humankind," it said.
As per the official website of Nobel Prize, the prize amount of 11 million Swedish kronor will be divided among the winners, with one half to David Baker and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper.
