The 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry recognized Demis Hassabis, John Jumper and David Baker for using machine learning to tackle one of biology’s biggest challenges: predicting the 3D shape of proteins and designing them from scratch. The physics award went to two computer scientists who laid the foundations for machine learning, while the chemistry laureates were rewarded for their use of machine learning to tackle one of biology’s biggest mysteries: how proteins fold. For decades, one of biology’s greatest challenges was predicting a protein’s shape based solely on its amino acid sequence. The idea behind machine learning is to use hidden patterns in data to answer complex questions. These new proteins included a light-emitting enzyme, demonstrating that machine learning can help create novel synthetic proteins.

Source: The Hindu October 11, 2024 18:06 UTC