The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for the computer design of proteins and the prediction of their three-dimensional structure.

The Nobel Committee has announced the names of the winners of the chemistry prize for 2024. The winners were David Baker, Demis Hasabis and John Jumper.

Hasabis and Jumper, creators of the AlphaFold2 program, receive the award for “prophecy of the three-dimensional structure of proteins,” and Baker for “computer design of proteins.”

In general, the work of the laureates made it possible to solve a fundamental problem that has stood in chemistry and biology for almost half a century: the sequence of amino acids in a protein uniquely determines its three-dimensional structure, but it was impossible to predict what it should be like knowing only this sequence for the work of the current laureates.

Let’s take a closer look at this structure architecture defined using AlphaFold2. This protein structure is part of a large dense structure in the human body. More than thousand proteins form a pore through membrane surrounding cell nucleus.

Animation: (c)Terezia… pic.twitter.com/840RqbJrJD

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 9, 2024

The Chemistry Prize is the third within the Nobel week. Previously, the winners of awards in the field of medicine and physiology, as well as in the field of physics, became known. Victor Ambrose and Gary Ravkun received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discovery of microRNAs. The physics award went to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton. They were awarded the award for fundamental research into neural networks.

On October 10, the name of the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature will be announced. The Peace Prize laureate will be announced in Oslo on October 11. On October 14, it will become known who received the Alfred Nobel Prize in Economics in 2024 (it was founded by the Bank of Sweden in 1968).

The awards will be presented to the laureates on December 10, the day of Alfred Nobel’s death. The ceremony will take place in Stockholm. The Peace Prize laureates will be honored in Oslo on this day.

Source: Racurs

David

I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.