STOCKHOLM, 9 October - The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2024 has been awarded to American biochemist David Baker and scientists John Jumper and Demis Hassabis, working in London, for their discoveries of the structure of proteins, the Nobel Committee of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced.
The prize was awarded "for computational protein design" and "for protein structure prediction", the committee specified.
While Baker designed an entirely new kind of protein, Top7, "that was unlike any other protein", Hassabis and Jumper developed an artificial intelligence model called AlphaFold2 that allowed them to predict the structure of more than 200 million proteins identified in other living organisms. Since their breakthrough discovery, the committee said, AlphaFold2 has been used by more than two million people in 190 countries.
Among other scientific applications, these discoveries can help researchers "better understand antibiotic resistance and create images of enzymes that can break down plastics," the committee said in a press release.
TASS/ gnews - RoZ
PHOTO - Xinhua/Peng Ziyang
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