Trio of scientists researching protein structure gets Nobel chemistry

Scientists David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the award-giving body said on Wednesday, for work on the structure of proteins.

The prize, widely regarded as among the most prestigious in the scientific world, was awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm and is worth the equivalent of $1.45 million Cdn, split among the award winners.

Half the prize was awarded to Baker "for computational protein design" while the other half was shared by Hassabis and Jumper "for protein structure prediction," the academy said.

Baker works at the University of Washington in Seattle, while Hassabis and Jumper both work at Google Deepmind in London. Baker and Jumper are American, and Hassabis is British.

Hassabis and Jumper utilized artificial intelligence to predict the structure of almost all known proteins, while Baker learned how to master life's building blocks and create entirely new proteins, the award-giving body said.

"One of the discoveries being recognized this year concerns the construction of spectacular proteins," the academy said in a statement. "The other is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences."