Chemistry Nobel Prize 2024 awarded to David Baker, John Jumper, Demis Hassabis

NEW DELHI: This year’s Chemistry Nobel Prize 2024 has been awarded to David Baker “for computational protein design” and to John M Jumper and Demis Hassabis for “for protein structure prediction”. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the winners of the Nobel Prize 2024 in chemistry today.

“The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2024 #NobelPrize in Chemistry with one half to David Baker “for computational protein design” and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper “for protein structure prediction,” said the official page of Nobel Prize in a post on social media.

This year’s Nobel Prize laureates in chemistry cracked the code for proteins’ amazing structures. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 has been awarded for groundbreaking advancements in the study of proteins, which are essential chemical tools for life. David Baker has achieved the remarkable feat of creating entirely new types of proteins, while his co-laureates, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, have developed an AI model that addresses a longstanding challenge in biology: predicting the intricate structures of proteins. These innovations have immense potential for advancing science and medicine.

Discoveries of chemistry Nobel Prize winners

In 2020, Hassabis and Jumper introduced AlphaFold2, an AI model that revolutionized protein structure prediction. It has enabled the accurate prediction of nearly all 200 million known proteins. Since its launch, AlphaFold2 has been utilized by over two million researchers across 190 countries. This breakthrough has numerous scientific applications, including enhancing our understanding of antibiotic resistance and generating images of enzymes capable of breaking down plastic.

On the other hand, Baker achieved a groundbreaking milestone by creating Top7, the first protein with a structure entirely distinct from all known proteins. This innovation was a game-changer for researchers in protein design, as prior efforts had mainly focused on mimicking existing structures. Top7's unique architecture had never been seen in nature and, at 93 amino acids long, it surpassed all previously designed proteins in size.