This morning, Sir Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs, and Dr. John Jumper, director of Google DeepMind, announced the 2024 jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Derive protein structure from amino acid sequence. David Baker also received a co-award for his work on computational protein design.
Before AlphaFold, predicting protein structures was a complex and time-consuming process.
AlphaFold’s predictions are made freely available through the AlphaFold protein structure database and have provided more than 2 million scientists and researchers in 190 countries with powerful tools to make new discoveries. The AlphaFold 2 paper published in 2021 remains one of the most cited publications of all time.
AlphaFold’s contributions to science have been widely celebrated, including the 2023 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the 2023 Life Sciences Breakthrough Award, the 2023 Canada Gardner International Award, and the 2024 Clarivate Citation. and the 2024 Keio Medical Prize. Science award winner.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has shown incredible potential for use in scientific research, and AlphaFold was a proof of concept. As more scientists adopt AI for everything from building data, simulating experiments, designing drugs, modeling complexity, finding new solutions to existing problems, and building on existing knowledge, We will continue to see fundamental advances in science.
In a statement issued after learning of the news, Demis Hassabis said:
“Winning the Nobel Prize is a once-in-a-lifetime honor. I would like to thank the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, John Jumper and the AlphaFold team, DeepMind and the Google team, and all my colleagues past and present who made this moment possible.” AlphaFold has dedicated my career to advancing AI because it has unparalleled potential to improve the lives of billions of people. Already used by more than 2 million researchers to advance critical research, from enzyme design to drug discovery. Take a look We’re back with AlphaFold as the first evidence of AI’s incredible potential to accelerate scientific discovery. ”
John Jumper released the following statement upon receiving the news of winning the Nobel Prize:
“We would like to thank the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for this extraordinary honor. This is an important demonstration that AI can make science faster and ultimately help understand disease and develop treatments, and this award recognizes Google DeepMind. This award recognizes the achievements of an outstanding team.
Computational biology has long held great promise in generating actionable insights that can be used in real-world experiments. AlphaFold delivered on this promise. A world of new insights and scientific discoveries awaits us, made possible by using AI as a scientific tool. Thank you to my long-time colleagues who made this moment of recognition and the many moments of discovery that lie ahead possible. ”
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