2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry: Three scientists win for groundbreaking work in proteins

A trio of scientists who opened new doors in our understanding of the structure of proteins — the fundamental building blocks of biology — and even came up with ways to create new proteins won the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday.

The prize went to David Baker of the University of Washington, and to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, who work at Google DeepMind in London. Baker will receive half the 11 million Swedish kronor (just over $1 million) prize, while Hassabis and Jumper will split the other half.

Proteins consist of hundreds of thousands of atoms, the arrangement and position of which define that particular protein’s biological function. So “to understand how life works, we first need to understand the shape of proteins,” Heiner Linke, the chair of the Nobel chemistry committee, said Wednesday at a press conference announcing the winners.

Researchers had long dreamed that there could be a way to predict the 3-D structure of proteins from just knowing the sequences of their individual components that are encoded in DNA. But, Linke said, “for several decades, this was considered impossible.”

Hassabis and Jumper proved that conventional wisdom wrong, with discoveries in 2018 and 2020 that relied on artificial intelligence to be able to predict the structure of essentially any protein in nature.

Scientists had also dreamed of the ability to build new proteins — to effectively learn how to use nature’s tools in our own customized ways. Baker helped realize that aspiration. He developed computational tools that enable researchers “to design spectacular new proteins with entirely novel shapes and functions, opening endless possibilities for the greatest benefit to humankind,” Linke said.

Prior to this year, there were 194 chemistry laureates, including eight women.