The three protein researchers David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper receive the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their achievements in the fields of computer-aided protein design and protein structure prediction. The award underlines the importance of computational chemistry in modern scientific research, which has made gigantic advances in the last decades thanks to the rapid development of computing power and algorithms and not least the creativity and intensive research of scientists such as the three award-winning protein researchers.
Proteins are important building blocks of life and also the chemical tools inside living organisms. The giant molecules fulfill a variety of tasks: As enzymes, they enable essential chemical reactions in the body, they serve as signalling substances and build muscles, skin and hair, among other things. The structure of proteins is fundamental to their functionality - incorrectly folded proteins lose their effectiveness in most cases. The decoding and prediction of protein structures is therefore the basis for understanding the function of proteins - and this understanding is of great importance in biochemistry and medicine, for example in the development of drugs. However, the prediction of protein structure is a very big challenge in science due to the size and complexity of the giant molecules, which makes them quite hard to handle and simulate.
One half of this year's Nobel Prize goes to the biochemist David Baker, Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Washington, for the development of completely new proteins designed for specific applications on the computer. His group has produced many proteins that are used for example for pharmaceuticals and vaccines. The other half of the Nobel Prize is shared by software developer and AI expert Demis Hassabis and chemist John Jumper, who both work in the UK, for predicting the complex structures of proteins using AI. They developed the well-known AI model AlphaFold that is used by researchers worldwide and founded DeepMind.
The achievements of computer-aided protein research open up far-reaching possibilities, for example in pharmacy: whereas drugs used to be developed according to the trial-and-error principle, thanks to their work on the computer they can be designed in such a way that they are likely to match the molecules whose effect they are intended to change.
This shows how important computer-aided research is today. In medicine, in mathematics, in chemistry. Computational chemistry makes it possible to calculate the structure and properties of molecules and even predict their behavior in chemical reactions or their stability in industrial plants. Computational chemistry also plays an important role in UniSysCat. The future of chemical research belongs to the combination of computational chemistry and experiment - also in our catalysis research. We are therefore delighted about this year's selection by the Nobel Committee and congratulate warmest!