Nobel Prize: Google’s triumph on the Nobel stage resolves a 50-year-old mystery

Google DeepMind’s co-founder and chief executive Demis Hassabis, along with John Jumper, a researcher at DeepMind have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their breakthrough in protein structure prediction using artificial intelligence (AI). The duo was accompanied by the American biochemist David Baker.

DeepMind’s AI tool, AlphaFold has cracked the code for predicting complex protein structures from amino acid sequences, resolving a five-decade scientific enigma.

The 2024 Nobel Prize for chemistry was announced on Wednesday 9 October 2024 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Background

David Baker is the director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine. Baker’s research group develops innovative protein design software to tackle challenges in medicine, technology, and sustainability. The experiments make use of machine learning (ML) methods to generate functional proteins.

Demis Hassabis is currently the chief executive officer of Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs. He, along with John Jumper, unveiled AlphaFold 2 in 2020.

Hassabis is an AI researcher, who graduated from Cambridge. He has been associated with roles such as lead AI programmer and also started his own venture Elixir Studios, a London-based independent games developer. Further, pursuing PhD in cognitive neuroscience from University College London, he continued experimenting with AI as the CEO and co-founder of a machine learning AI startup DeepMind.AlphaFold 2

AlphaFold 2 is an AI model developed through Google’s DeepMind initiative. The experiment resulted in the accurate prediction of nearly 200 million known proteins.

AlphaFold is an AI system that predicts the 3D structure of proteins from their amino acid sequences. The technology has turned a once complex and time-consuming process into a seamless experience through its predictions available freely at AlphaFold Protein Structure Database.

It has been used by over two million researchers worldwide, in areas such as antibiotic resistance and creating enzymes that are capable of breaking down plastics.

Computational Protein Design

In the year 2003, David Baker led the design of a new protein using bespoke software laying the groundwork for designer proteins.

Bespoke software refers to customised software solutions designed specifically for a particular project.

The computational method to design novel proteins transforms the possibilities of protein engineering. The new proteins are formed by manipulating 20 different amino acids.

Baker has introduced new functions in the newly designed proteins such as degrading plastics, which are beyond the capabilities of natural proteins.

This scientific breakthrough opens up new possibilities for designing proteins with tailored functions to address critical scientific and medical challenges, developing novel therapeutic solutions.

Last year, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was jointly awarded to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots.