The Nobel Prize 2024 in Chemistry was announced by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Sweden, The prize will be partly given to David Baker “for computational protein design” and the other half will be jointly given to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper ” For protein structure prediction”.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024 focuses on the groundbreaking contribution of the laurates towards unveiling the nuancess protein structure. David Baker has achieved significant milestones by building completely new types of proteins through computational protein design.
Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper have developed an AI model to predict complex structures of all the known proteins. Both works have enormous potential.

Proteins are the essential chemical tool that controls and drives all the chemical reactions required for life. Without protein, life will cease to exist. It generally consists of 20 different amino acids, known as life-building blocks. In 2003, David Baker used these blocks to design a completely new protein. Since then, his research group has produced several proteins that can be used in pharmaceuticals, development of new vaccines, nanomaterials and minimal sensors.

Demis Hassabis and John Jumper’s AI model has fulfilled the challenge faced by researchers for the past 50 years i.e. prediction of protein structures from their amino acid sequences.In 2020, both Hassabis and Jumper presented an AI model -AlphaFold2.The AI model enabled them. to predict the structure of virtually all the identified 200 million proteins. Its scientific application includes a better understanding of antibiotic resistance and how microbes decompose plastic.

The ability to create new proteins and predict protein structure has opened up a vast opportunity to benefit humankind.