Protein design and structure prediction win Nobel Prize in Chemistry | News

The developers of computational tools that can accurately design and predict protein structures have been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Nobel Committee noted that these tools have led to a revolution in biological chemistry and are now used by millions of researchers around the world.

Demis Hassabis and John Jumper from Google’s DeepMind team received half the award for their work on AlphaFold and AlphaFold2 – programs that dramatically increased the accuracy of protein structure predictions. In 2021, the team published 350,000 structures, including those of all 20,000 proteins in the human proteome. In 2022, they provided the structures of another 200 million proteins – almost every protein known to science.

The other half of the prize went to David Baker of the University of Washington for work on protein design that began in the 1990s. He and his colleagues developed software called Rosetta that analyzed structural fragments of known proteins and used that information to design entirely new proteins that would have the desired shapes.

In 2003, Baker used the tool to design a protein of 93 amino acids and then synthesize it in the lab – showing that the real version of the synthetic protein was very close to its predicted structure. Since then, Baker’s lab has continued to develop the Rosetta tool, using it to design new proteins that catalyze reactions not found in nature and that have specific desired biological functions.

According to the Nobel Committee, the tools developed by Hassabis, Jumper and Baker mean that today “both the structural design and prediction problems have been largely solved.”

Making the announcement, committee member Johan Åqvist, himself a computational biologist, pointed out that the leap in prediction accuracy enabled by AlphaFold2 was due to the program’s use of neural networks and deep learning – the technology at the heart of yesterday’s Nobel Prize ceremony for Physics stood.

Åqvist described the impact of protein structure design and prediction tools as “truly enormous,” noting that Baker’s research “opened up a whole new world of protein structures that we had never seen before.” He also noted that over two million researchers around the world use the AlphaFold protein structure database.

“To understand how proteins work, you need to know what they look like, and that’s exactly what this year’s laureates did,” Åqvist added.

Speaking to the press immediately following the announcement, Baker said he was “very excited and deeply honored.” He said he was sleeping when he got the call from the Nobel Committee, and when his wife started screaming when she heard the news, he was told to “go somewhere where he could actually listen.” “It will be a very special, special day,” he said.

Reacting to the announcement, Royal Society of Chemistry President Annette Doherty called the laureates’ work “remarkable.” “Chemistry is a science that has innovation at its core and has the potential to truly transform our world, and her exciting work is a prime example of this,” she said. “The benefits of this research are remarkable as we can all look forward to applications that improve our health and well-being.”

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