By Adedapo Adesanya
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 has been awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to the trio of David Baker from the University of Washington for computational protein design and Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper of Google DeepMind, London, UK for protein structure prediction.
According to the committee, the new laureates cracked the code for proteins’ amazing structures.
According to a statement, Baker succeeded with the almost impossible feat of building entirely new kinds of proteins while the duo of Hassabis and Jumper developed an AI model to solve a 50-year-old problem of predicting proteins’ complex structures.
“One of the discoveries being recognised this year concerns the construction of spectacular proteins. The other is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences. Both of these discoveries open up vast possibilities,” said Mr Heiner Linke, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.
“Each Nobel Prize needs to stand completely on its own feet, both today and perhaps in particular in the eyes of history looking back. So that is the main consideration. And today’s prize is really about a breakthrough in biochemistry.”
“Making the connection in both ways between amino acid sequence and protein structure, which then is related to protein function… was actually called a ‘grand challenge’ in chemistry, and in particular in biochemistry, for decades. So it’s that breakthrough that gets awarded today,” he added.
On Thursday, the prize for Literature will be awarded followed by Peace on Friday and Economics next Monday.