2024 Nobel in Chemistry for “Designing protein” and “Predicting protein structure”  

One half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 has been awarded to David Baker “for computational protein design”. The other half has been awarded jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper “for protein structure prediction”.  

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 recognises contributions towards our ability to predict protein structures and design new proteins.  

One half of the Prize has been awarded to David Baker “for computational protein design”. In 2003, he built entirely new kinds of proteins using 20 diffrent amino acids. The new proteins were unlike any other proteins and have applications as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors. 

The other half has been awarded jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper “for protein structure prediction”. In 2020, they successfully developed an AI model called AlphaFold2 for predicting complex three-dimensional structures of proteins from atheir mino acid sequences. Their AI model predicts structure of all the 200 million proteins identified so far. This ability is helpful in better understanding of antibiotic resistance and in creating images of enzymes that can decompose plastic.  

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Sources:  

1. NobelPrize.org. Press release – The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024. Posted 9 October 2024. Available at https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2024/press-release/  

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