Chemistry Nobel Awarded for an AI System That Predicts Protein Structures

 Chemistry Nobel Awarded for an AI System Chem That Predicts Protein Structures

October 11, 2024• Physics 17, 149

The algorithm called AlphaFold has now been used to predict structures for all known proteins.

K. Dill/Stony Brook University

The protein-folding process can be represented as a pathway through an energy landscape. Protein molecules start out at the highest energies as chains of amino acids (upper edges of the funnel shape) and drop to lower energies as they fold into their final stable structures (bottom of the funnel).

The Nobel prize for Chemistry has been awarded this year for work on the computational design and structural prediction of protein molecules. Half of the prize goes to David Baker of the University of Washington and half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper of the artificial intelligence (AI) company Google DeepMind, based in London.

With the 2024 physics Nobel Prize given to researchers for their foundational work on the neural networks used by today’s AI systems, the chemistry prize further emphasizes the transformative effect such machine learning algorithms are having in many fields. The chemistry award “recognizes how AI is supercharging science,” says Frances Arnold of the California Institute of Technology, a chemistry Nobel laureate for her work on creating non-natural enzymes with new functions.