The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to three scientists who have help unravel some of the enduring secrets of proteins, the building blocks of life.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded on Wednesday to three scientists who have help unravel some of the enduring secrets of proteins, the building blocks of life.
While Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google’s DeepMind lab used artificial intelligence techniques to predict the structure of proteins, biochemist David Baker managed to design totally new ones never seen in nature.
These breakthroughs are hoped to lead towards numerous advances, from discovering new drugs to enzymes that decompose pollutants.
Here is an explainer about the science behind the Nobel win.
Proteins are molecules that serve as “the factories of everything that happens in our body”, Davide Calebiro, a protein researcher at the UK’s University of Birmingham, told AFP.
DNA provides the blueprint for every cell. Proteins then use this information to do the work of turning that cell into something specific—such as a brain cell or a muscle cell.
Proteins are made up of 20 different kinds of amino acid. The sequence that these acids start out in determines what 3D structure they will twist and fold into.
American Chemical Society president Mary Carroll compared how this works to an old-fashioned telephone cord.
“So you could stretch out that telephone cord, and then you would just have a one-dimensional structure”, she told AFP.
