By Claire Moses, CADE Metz & Teddy Rosenbluth
The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to three scientists for discoveries that show the potential of advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, to predict the shape of proteins, life’s chemical tools, and to invent new ones.
The laureates are: Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind, who used AI to predict the structure of millions of proteins; and David Baker at the University of Washington, who used computer software to invent a new protein.
The impact of the work of this year’s laureates is “truly huge,” Johan Aqvist, a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said on Wednesday. “In order to understand how proteins work, you need to know what they look like, and that’s what this year’s laureates have done.”
Wednesday’s prize was also the second this week to involve artificial intelligence, highlighting the technology’s growing significance in scientific research.
Hassabis and Jumper, the committee said, have used their AI model, AlphaFold2, to calculate the structure of all human proteins. The researchers “also predicted the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have so far discovered when mapping Earth’s organisms,” the committee said.
Hassabis and Jumper were part of a team at Google DeepMind, the company’s central AI lab. The lab’s AI technology can rapidly and reliably predict the physical shape of proteins and enzymes — the microscopic mechanisms that drive the behavior of viruses, bacteria, the human body and all other living things.
Proteins begin as strings of chemical compounds, before twisting and folding into three-dimensional shapes that define what they can and cannot do. Before the arrival of AlphaFold, scientists would spend months or even decades trying to pinpoint the precise shape of individual proteins.
When the Google team unveiled the technology in 2020, many scientists had assumed that such as a breakthrough was still years away. Scientists had struggled for more than 50 years to solve what was called “the protein folding problem.”
Baker “opened up a completely new world of protein structures that we had never seen before,” Aqvist said. In 2003, the committee pointed out, Baker “succeeded in designing a new protein that was unlike any other protein,” which it said was “something that can only be described as an extraordinary development.”
His research group, the committee said, “has produced one imaginative protein creation after another, including proteins that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors.” Baker’s proteins have been the basis of several potential medical treatments, like an antiviral nasal spray for Covid-19 and a medication for celiac disease. He has also co-founded more than 20 biotechnology companies.
Rapid AI technology
Google scientists Demis Hassabis and John Jumper’s AI lab technology AlphaFold could pinpoint the precise shape of individual proteins in a few hours or even a few minute. Biochemists have used it to speed the discovery of medicines, and it could also lead to new biological tools such as enzymes that efficiently break down plastic bottles and convert them into recyclable materials.
David Baker’s research group has produced proteins that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials, and tiny sensors.
 "Google DeepMind's chemistry Nobel showcases AI's medical potential")
