The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded. Protein discoveries highlighted

The Nobel Prizes are awarded every year and are currently ongoing Nobel Week 2024. Honors in physiology and medicine were announced on Monday, and in physics on Tuesday. Wednesday is over chemistry award. The winners join a globally respected group of experts whose work and contribution to science has been enormous and has been appreciated in a unique way.

The special committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences that announced the Nobel Prize in Chemistry today met after 10 a.m. on Wednesday. After several dozen minutes, the names of the winners who received unique distinctions were revealed to the world. Who are they and what did they receive awards for?

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to donate the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2024, awarding half David Baker “for computational protein design” and the other half together Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper “for predicting protein structure”, where artificial intelligence was used.

Proteins are structures found in all living organisms and viruses.

Proteins are usually composed of 20 amino acids and are the building blocks of life. David Baker already used these blocks in 2003 creating a new protein whose structure was different from the existing ones.

Demis Hassabis and John Jumper created a method for predicting the structure of proteins, which was heralded by experts as a revolution in chemistry. Scientists have been trying to achieve this since the 1970s. The breakthrough came only four years ago, when Hassabis and Jumper presented an artificial intelligence model called AlphaFold2. This made it possible predicting the structure of almost all of the approximately 200 million proteinswhich have been classified so far.

It is worth adding that in 2023 they will be the winners of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei Yekimov. They received distinction for discovery related to the synthesis of quantum dotsi.e. the smallest particles in nanotechnology.

When announcing the award last year, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said it was a major achievement of “the greatest benefit to humanity.” The scientists’ work was used to create television screens and computer monitors.

Source: geekweek.interia.pl

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