LONDON (AP) \u2014 Three scientists who discovered powerful techniques to decode and even design novel proteins \u2014 the building blocks of life \u2014 were awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday. Their work used advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence, and holds the potential to transform how new drugs and other materials are made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The prize was awarded to David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and to Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, computer scientists at Google DeepMind, a British-American artificial intelligence research laboratory based in London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry, said the award honored research that unraveled \u201ca grand challenge in chemistry, and in particular in biochemistry, for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s that breakthrough that gets awarded today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Proteins are complex molecules with thousands of atoms that twist, turn, loop and spiral in a countless array of shapes that determine their biological function. For decades, scientists have dreamed of being able to efficiently design and build new proteins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Baker, 62, whose work has received funding from the National Institutes of Health since the 1990s, created a computer program called Rosetta that helped analyze information about existing proteins in comprehensive databases to build new proteins that don\u2019t exist in nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt seems that you can almost construct any type of protein now with this technology,\u201d said Johan \u00c5qvist of the Nobel committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hassabis, 48, and Jumper, 39, created an artificial intelligence model that has predicted the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have ever identified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The duo \u201cmanaged to crack the code. With skillful use of artificial intelligence, they made it possible to predict the complex structure of essentially any known protein in nature,\u201d Linke said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ability to custom design new proteins \u2014 and better understand existing proteins \u2014 could enable researchers to create new kinds of medicines and vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It could also allow scientists to design new enzymes to break down plastics or other waste materials that would \u201cneutralize\u201d pollution, Baker told a news conference, or even come up with entirely new material for semi conductors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s fantastic prospects for making better medicines \u2014 medicines that are smarter, that only work in the right time and place in the body,\u201d Baker told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One example is a potential nasal spray that could slow or stop the rapid spread of specific viruses, such as COVID-19, he said. Another is a medicine to disrupt the cascade of symptoms known as cytokine storm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat was always the holy grail. If you could figure out how protein sequences folded into their particular structures, then it might be possible to design protein sequences to fold into previously never seen structures that might be useful for us,\u201d said Jon Lorsch, a director at the NIH.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Baker told the AP he found out he won the Nobel during the early hours of the morning alongside his wife, who immediately started screaming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo it was a little deafening, too,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an online news briefing, Hassabis said he was just having a \u201cnormal morning\u201d at home when he eventually got the call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Nobel committee didn\u2019t initially have his number and first managed to get hold of his wife, but she hung up on them a few times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey kept persisting and then I think she realized it was a Swedish number and then they asked for my number,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so incredible. It\u2019s so unreal at this moment,\u201d said Jumper, a researcher and director at Google DeepMind. \u201cAnd it\u2019s wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of Britain\u2019s leading tech figures, Hassabis co-founded the AI research lab DeepMind in 2010, which was acquired by Google in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the past researchers labored for months or years to decode the structure of a single complex protein.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the AI model created by the DeepMind researchers, called AlphaFold, \u201ccan determine the structure of a protein pretty accurately within a few seconds or minutes,\u201d Hassabis told the AP in an interview, adding that this saves researchers \u201cyears of potentially painstaking experimental work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The two research groups learned from each other\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Baker said Hassabis and Jumper\u2019s artificial intelligence work gave his team a huge boost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe breakthroughs made by Demis and John on protein structure prediction really highlighted to us the power that AI could have,\u201d said Baker. \u201cAnd that led us to apply these AI methods to protein design.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Science has sped up, said Jumper. \u201cIt is a key demonstration that AI will make science faster \u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s the second Nobel prize this year awarded to someone with links to artificial intelligence research at Google.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nobel physics prize winner Geoffrey Hinton, 76, often called\u00a0the \u201cgodfather of AI,\u201d\u00a0also worked at the California-based tech company until quitting so he could speak more openly about the potential downsides of AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m hoping AI will lead to tremendous benefits,\u201d Hinton told a news conference Tuesday. \u201cI\u2019m convinced that it will do that in health care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy worry is that it may also lead to bad things. And in particular, when we get things more intelligent than ourselves, no one really knows whether we\u2019re going to be able to control them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wednesday\u2019s chemistry prize winners represent a younger generation taking forward the work of the AI pioneers honored for physics, said Michael Kearns, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They are making AI models \u201cscalable and practical and applying it to very important scientific problems.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Baker gets half of the 11 million Swedish Kronor ($1 million) prize money, while Hassabis and Jumper share the other half.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Nobel announcements opened Monday with medical researchers Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun\u00a0winning the medicine prize.\u00a0Hinton and fellow AI pioneer John Hopfield, 91, won the\u00a0physics prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The awards continue with the literature prize Thursday, the Nobel Peace Prize Friday and the economics award on Oct. 14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The prize money comes from a bequest by the award\u2019s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel\u2019s death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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