Protein Pioneers: Award Reveals Big Breakthroughs in Science

Meet the new Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry! David Baker, a US biochemist, and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and John Jumper have just been honored for their incredible work on proteins. They've each received half of the Swedish Krona (SEK 11mn, $1. 06mn) prize for pushing the boundaries of protein science. Baker, from the University of Washington, has done amazing things with computational protein design, creating totally new kinds of proteins. Meanwhile, the DeepMind scientists have developed an AI model called AlphaFold that solves a long-standing puzzle: predicting the complex structures of proteins. This alone is a massive deal, as it opens up numerous possibilities for the future of drug development and disease treatment. So, what does this AI-driven wonder do exactly? AlphaFold has created the most comprehensive and accurate database of known proteins, covering about 200mn of them. This will help scientists discover biological secrets much faster. Hassabis, DeepMind’s co-founder and CEO, compared it to finding a needle in a haystack with super-efficient tools. The latest version of AlphaFold goes beyond just proteins to look at other biological networks in our cells, involving DNA, RNA, and ligands, which are crucial for disease markers. Applications of these models are already being seen in vaccine design and discovering new enzymes to combat plastics. DeepMind even has a spinoff company, Isomorphic Labs, aiming to use AlphaFold's discoveries to cut drug discovery timelines in half! Michael Dennis from CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society, praised AlphaFold for letting scientists predict 3D protein structures, which is monumental for developing new drugs and therapies.