A discovery in the field of proteins earned the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The discovery solves one of the most difficult problems in biology and could be used to create drugs and vaccines.  Honorees were David Baker and Demis Hassabis. Both work for London-based research lab Google DeepMind, a division of Google. Professor John Jumper also received part of the award.

KEY FACTS

• David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have been awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their scientists’ research into the structure of proteins. The prize is worth SEK 11 million ($1.1 million).
• Demis Hassabis is one of the founders of DeepMind. John Jumper led the development of the protein prediction software AlphaFold, and David Baker is a professor at the University of Washington.
• Half of the prize was awarded to Baker “for computational protein design,” and the other half was split between Hassabis and Jumper “for protein structure prediction,” the academy said.
• Proteins are the building blocks of life and are found in every cell of the human body. The discovery solves one of the most difficult problems in biology and could be used to create drugs and vaccines. 
• This is the third prize awarded this year. Yesterday, the Nobel laureates in physics were announced, and the day before that, discoveries in medicine were honored.

IMPORTANT QUOTE

“The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry is dedicated to proteins – the ingenious chemical weapons of life. David Baker has achieved the almost impossible feat of creating entirely new types of proteins. Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have developed an artificial intelligence model to solve a 50-year-old problem: predicting the complex structures of proteins. These discoveries have enormous potential,” the Nobel Committee said.

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KEY STORY 

The Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded on Monday. The prize went to the discoverers of micro RNA and its role in gene regulation. Yesterday, the distinction for physics went to scientists who made discoveries that give more opportunities to machine learning. John Hopfield of Princeton University and Geoffrey Hinton of the University of Toronto were honored for their pioneering work on artificial neural networks, which underpin much of modern artificial intelligence.