2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Google’s artificial intelligence that predicts protein structure

“Today we have a great prize,” Heiner Linke, chairman of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said after the winners were announced. These researchers not only solved a 50-year-old scientific problem but their discoveries “opened up enormous possibilities” in many areas of science. Its tools are fundamental to understanding the biology of all living beings on the planet and may lead to the development of new drugs or technologies against plastic pollution or antibiotic resistance. They represent a before and after for science.

Proteins are made up of 20 different amino acids, which can be described as the building blocks of life. In 2003, the American David Baker (Seattle, 1962) managed to design a new protein using these components that was unlike any other. Since then, his research group has produced one protein after another, some of which can be used as drugs, vaccines, nanomaterials, and tiny sensors. «We can create new molecules with surprising functions. “My lab works on proteins that capture and store carbon, assemble them into motors and decompose plastics,” Baker himself told this newspaper at the time.

The second discovery was to be able to predict the three-dimensional structure of proteins, which were formed by long chains of amino acids folded like origami. In 2020, the British Hassabis (London, 1976) and the American John Jumper (Little Rock, Arkansas, 1985) presented an artificial intelligence model called AlphaFold2. With their help, they have been able to predict the structure of almost all the proteins identified by researchers, 200 million. Since its success, AlphaFold2’s freely available predictions have been used by more than two million people in 190 countries.

Antibiotics and Plastic

Among many scientific applications, researchers can now better understand antibiotic resistance and image enzymes that can break down plastics. It has been applied to, among other things, the understanding of proteins that affect the health of bees and the development of an effective vaccine against malaria. Likewise, it has been used to combat diseases such as leishmaniasis, Chagas disease or leprosy. “We felt like we changed the world,” Jumper said in an interview with ABC.

In a telephone connection, Baker admitted that, although he had heard his name among potential candidates in recent years, the award came as a surprise to him. “I’m very excited. I just want to thank my family and all the people I’ve worked with over the years who have made it possible for us to get here.

Asked about the future implications of artificial intelligence, Baker said “they’re tremendous.” «My colleagues and I had been working on protein design for years, but it was not until Hassabis and Jumper’s discovery of artificial intelligence that the power and precision of the tools increased incredibly. He said, “I’m very excited to think about all the possibilities that this system offers to create a better world with applications to enhance medicine or technology.”

speed up science

“This moment is so incredible, so surreal. “It’s amazing, such a great honor,” Jumper said excitedly at a press conference after the Nobel announcement. In his opinion, alphaFOL allows us to “understand diseases, our work will lead to more people being healthy. We want to make the world a better place and it’s amazing to see the work the scientific community does with this tool every day.

“Medicine is hard because we don’t understand how the body works, it’s a very complex machine,” Jumper said. Citing the example of a protein key to malaria transmission, he stressed, “Alphafold can help many scientists around the world understand diseases and fight them faster.”

Hassabis himself has expressed himself in a similar way, who stressed that he has dedicated his entire life to artificial intelligence because he is convinced of its “ability to accelerate scientific discoveries”.

Alphafold’s contributions to science have been widely praised. His recognition includes the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award 2023 or the Breakthrough Award in Life Sciences 2023. Baker, Hassabis and Jumper received the Frontiers of Knowledge Prize in Biomedicine in 2023. And Hassabis won the Princess of Asturias Prize for Scientific and Technological Research. In 2022, notably, with, among others, Geoffrey Hinton, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday.

“I expected it,” Silvia Osuna, an ICREA researcher at the Institute of Computational Chemistry and Catalysis (IQCC) at the University of Verona, told ABC about the new Nobel Prize. Scientists who design enzymes to speed up chemical reactions and create new drugs to reduce cholesterol or diabetes believe the impact of the award winners’ work is “huge.” As of 2020, existing computational methods for predicting the structure of proteins were “not very accurate.” AlphaFold changed everything. This has led to the development of many tools and what previously took years to achieve can now be accomplished in a matter of minutes. It has a huge impact on many sectors, from medicine to industry,” he explains.

against malicious purposes

“Life cannot exist without proteins.” The fact that we can now predict protein structures and design our own proteins is a huge benefit for humanity,” he told the Swedish Academy. However, it’s not all lights. Same way. Not only can computational design lead to new drugs – the first, the SKYCovione vaccine against Covid-19, was approved last year – one can also do the same to harness dangerous biological agents and use them as weapons. For this reason, more than 160 scientists from around the world signed an initiative to prevent the design of deep learning tools from being used for malicious purposes. All were committed to investigating and registering the molecules that have been attempted to be manufactured.” Hassabis was betting this Wednesday on “international cooperation” to avoid abuses.

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry is worth 10 million Swedish crowns i.e. 900,000 euros. In 2023, the honor was awarded to Frenchman Mongi Bawendi, American Louis Bruce and Russian Alexey Ekimov for the invention of quantum dots, tiny particles that have many applications in the field of nanotechnology, from lighting televisions and LED lamps to tumor tissue surgery. ,