2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry Laureates Announced.

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to US scientist David Baker "for computational protein design" and Britons Demis Hassabis and John Jumper "for predicting protein structure." This is stated on the Nobel Foundation's website.

“One of the discoveries recognized this year is about creating impressive proteins. The other is about realizing a 50-year dream: predicting protein structures from their amino acid sequences. Both these discoveries open up great opportunities,” says Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Proteins usually consist of 20 different amino acids, which can be described as the building blocks of life. In 2003, David Baker managed to use these blocks to develop a new protein that was unlike any other. Since then, his research group has created protein compounds that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials, and tiny sensors.

The second discovery concerns predicting protein structures. In proteins, amino acids are linked together in long strands that fold into a three-dimensional structure crucial to the protein's function. Since the 1970s, researchers have tried to predict protein structures from amino acid sequences, but this has been notoriously difficult. However, four years ago, a groundbreaking breakthrough occurred.

In 2020, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper introduced an artificial intelligence model called AlphaFold2. With its help, they were able to predict the structure of nearly all 200 million proteins identified by researchers. Since the breakthrough, more than two million people from 190 countries have used AlphaFold2. Among many scientific applications, researchers can now better understand antibiotic resistance and create images of enzymes that can break down plastic.

“Life could not exist without proteins. The fact that we can now predict protein structures and create our own proteins benefits humanity the most,” states the statement on the Nobel Foundation's website.

It is known that this year's Nobel week, during which laureates in the fields of medicine, chemistry, physics, literature, economics, and peace will be announced, begins on October 7.

Recall that in 2024, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.

For reference, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been nominated for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.

Earlier, 18 deputies of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine signed a collective letter to the Nobel Committee urging them to reject Ruben Vardanyan's candidacy for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. In particular, in 2019, 22 members of the European Parliament initiated the inclusion of Vardanyan in sanction lists as a "Kremlin associate." And in 2022, 46 members of the US Congress included Vardanyan in a draft sanction list, alongside Kremlin propagandist Margarita Simonyan.