October 9, 2024
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2024 Chemistry Novel for Cracking the Secret Code of Proteins
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to biochemist David Baker and Google DeepMind scientists Demis Hassabis and John Jumper for predicting the shape and function of proteins and creating entirely new ones that can improve health and the environment.
vanbeets/Getty Images (the medal)
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry three scientists were awarded on Wednesday for discovering how proteins—the building blocks of life and the dynamos that keep cells functioning—do their job. Protein builds muscles and brains, helps the heart beat on time, and filters out toxins, among many other essential tasks.
Half of the novel went to researchers Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, both at Google DeepMind in London, for developing it. AlphaFold2—the artificial intelligence program that can predicting the shape and structure of a protein molecule from its chemical building blocksthey are called amino acids. Since the shape of a protein determines its function, these predictions are incredibly important.
The other half of the prize went to structural biologist David Baker of the University of Washington for imaging ways to design entirely new proteins—Molecules never seen in nature. Some of them artificial proteins they can serve as tiny sensors, and others can block the coronavirus that causes COVID. Baker will receive 50 percent of the prize money, 11 million Swedish kronor, or about $1 million. Hassabis and Jumper will get the other 50 percent.
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Because proteins are the basic workhorses of biologyThe ability to design artificial objects is “absolutely amazing,” said Johan Åqvist, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, at a press conference following the announcement. Baker, woken up by a phone call from Sweden, said he was “very excited and very honoured” to receive the award and was “standing on the shoulders of giants”. Among such researchers is Christian Anfinsen, a US scientist who received the 1972 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering that the shape of proteins is determined almost entirely by their amino acid sequence. (Baker also said that when he told his wife on the other end of the line that it was the Nobel Prize committee, she squealed so loudly with excitement that she missed some of the details about what she had won.)
A form of AI has now won two Nobel Prizes in two days. In the 1980s and 1990s, scientists worked to develop artificial neural networks, a type of machine learning that helped pave the way for newer AI. won the physics prize on Tuesday. “AI has had a transformative effect,” says Amanda Morris, a synthetic organic chemist at Virginia Tech. “It will accelerate the rate of discovery.” Traditional methods such as X-ray crystallography predict only a few relative structures of proteins, and little about what they do and how they do it. In contrast, the AlphaFold2 program It scored about 90 on a 100-point accuracy scale In a 2020 structural prediction competition. The program was able to predict the 3D structure of about 200 million proteins by 2022.
said Hassabis American scientific In an interview in 2022 AI appears to understand the various forces that attract and repel each other’s amino acid components. These forces move and twist a protein into specific configurations that the AI can predict. And thanks to these predictions, researchers can research using proteins to develop new pharmaceuticals, for example.
Morris says he is interested in the kinds of designer proteins that come from Baker’s work. Some of the proteins involved in photosynthesis are being used to develop renewable energy sources. As part of the photosynthetic process, such proteins remove electrons from water, which frees up electrons to harvest energy for other uses. “The problem is: these proteins break down easily,” he says. But “if we could build artificial ones with more stable materials, we might turn that into a renewable energy process that works better than nature.”
Among the artificial proteins Baker is most excited about, he says Molecules that block the way the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infects human cells. He and his team were able to engineer these proteins in such a small size that they could be given in a nasal spray rather than a conventional shot in the arm. he said American scientific In a 2021 article. Making these “mini binders,” as he and his team call them, would have been impossible before he and other scientists deduced some basic rules that bind some amino acids together and separate others, determining the shape of a protein and thus how. it interacts with other molecules, for example with the components of a virus.
In 2020, as Baker stood near a stage at a scientific meeting, waiting to speak on a panel I was moderating on protein design, he told me he preferred working on new molecules in the lab to giving public lectures. With all the perks of Nobel recognition, however, come the demands of the winner’s time. And Baker’s time in the lab will likely be limited in the coming months, at least after December’s awards ceremony in Stockholm.
