Seattle scientist David Baker wins Nobel Prize for work on proteins
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Seattle native David Baker won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Photo: Ian C Haydon/Courtesy UW Medicine Institute for Protein Design
David Baker, a University of Washington School of Medicine professor, was awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for computational protein design, a process that allows the development of custom-made proteins.
Why it matters: Baker figured out "the almost impossible feat of building entirely new kinds of proteins," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in an announcement.
- Baker's breakthrough enables scientists to create protein structures — including versions that neutralize viruses or target cancer cells — instead of waiting for nature to make them.
Go deeper: Proteins are the "the miniature machines that carry out all the important jobs in our body," performing a wide range of essential tasks within cells, Baker said at a news conference Wednesday.
- Baker and his team harnessed the power of computers to decode how amino acid chains, the building blocks of proteins, fold into specific three-dimensional shapes.
- These structures are critical to the proteins' functions in living organisms, and understanding them is key to both biological research and the development of new therapeutic drugs.
- Recently, artificial intelligence has been tapped by Baker and others to predict protein structures with unprecedented accuracy and speed, expanding scientists' ability to model the building blocks of life, according to UW Medicine.
State of play: The Garfield High School grad shares the Nobel Prize with Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper of DeepMind, a Google-owned artificial intelligence research laboratory.
Fun fact: Baker is also known for collaborating on the development of an online video puzzle game called Foldit with colleagues at the UW Center for Game Science, per UW.
- The game invites people with no background in science to help solve protein structure problems.
- More than 400,000 people have played the game and Foldit players have been named as co-authors in some of Baker's published work.
- These citizen scientists have contributed to research on a wide range of medical challenges including cancer, Alzheimer's disease and the Ebola virus.
What's next: Baker said he and others are working on proteins that neutralize the threat from pandemic-threatening viruses and that break down plastics.