The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the to?three scientists for their work on?the structure and design of?proteins.

David Baker, a biochsemistry professor at?the University of Washington, was recognised ¡°for computational protein design¡±, while Sir?Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, both of?Google DeepMind, were honoured ¡°for protein structure prediction¡±.

Professor Baker employed computational methods to create a new protein, while Sir?Demis, the chief executive and co-founder of DeepMind, and Dr?Jumper, a senior research scientist at the Google?AI laboratory, developed the artificial intelligence program AlphaFold2 in order to predict the structure of ¡°virtually all¡± identified proteins. Professor Baker will receive half of the Skr11?million (?812,000) prize, while Sir?Demis and Dr?Jumper will split the other half.

¡°One of the discoveries being recognised this year concerns the construction of spectacular proteins. The other is about fulfilling a 50-year-old dream: predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences,¡± Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel committee for chemistry, said in a statement. ¡°Both of these discoveries open up vast possibilities.¡±

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Professor Baker¡¯s research group has gone on to produce proteins with applications in medicine and nanomaterials; Sir?Demis and Dr?Jumper¡¯s work, meanwhile, has enabled scientists to ¡°better understand antibiotic resistance and create images of enzymes that can decompose plastics¡±.

Artificial intelligence has played a prominent role in this year¡¯s Nobel prize decisions: John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton were awarded the physics prize earlier this week for research that formed ¡°the foundation of today¡¯s powerful machine learning¡±.

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Speaking after the award was announced, Professor Baker said he ¡°stood on the shoulders of giants¡± in order to achieve his breakthrough, the Financial Times . ¡°Our new AI methods are much more powerful than traditional scientific model methods. I¡¯m really excited about all the ways in which protein design can now make the world a better place.¡±

Sir Demis said receiving the Nobel was ¡°the honour of a lifetime¡± . ¡°I¡¯ve dedicated my career to advancing AI because of its unparalleled potential to improve the lives of billions of people,¡± he continued. ¡°AlphaFold has already been used by more than 2?million researchers to advance critical work, from enzyme design to drug discovery. I?hope we¡¯ll look back on AlphaFold as the first proof point of AI¡¯s incredible potential to accelerate scientific discovery.¡±

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Dr Jumper the duo were ¡°so?honoured to be recognised for delivering on the long promise of computational biology to help us understand the protein world and to inform the incredible work of experimental biologists¡±.

¡°It is a key demonstration that AI will make science faster and ultimately help to understand disease and develop therapeutics,¡± he added.

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Commending the three new laureates, Ewan Birney, deputy director general of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and director of the EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), said tools such as AlphaFold ¡°are built on decades of experimental work and made possible thanks to a culture inside molecular biology of openly sharing data worldwide¡±.

¡°The potential of big data alongside AI and technology developments is limitless ¨C and this is the start,¡± Dr Birney said.

emily.dixon@timeshighereducation.com