NOBEL PRIZE IN SCIENCES, 2024

The 2024 Nobel Prize winners have been announced, honouring groundbreaking contributions in the fields of Chemistry, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has unveiled the name of this year’s laureates, recognising their innovative work that pushes the boundaries of science and enhances our understanding of the complex biological and physical systems that govern our world.

NOBEL PRIZE IN CHEMISTRY
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded in two parts: one-half to David Baker for his significant contributions to computational protein design, and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M Jumper for their work in protein structure prediction.

Understanding Proteins
Proteins are intricate molecules that play critical roles in biological systems. Composed of smaller units called amino acids, proteins perform a myriad functions, including catalysing biochemical reactions, transporting molecules, and providing structural support to cells and tissues. The specific sequence of amino acids determines a protein’s unique structure and function. There are 20 different types of amino acids, and their arrangement in long chains leads to the formation of diverse protein structures, each tailored for specific tasks in the organism.

David Baker’s Pioneering Work
David Baker, a professor at the University of Washington, has been a trailblazer in the field of protein design since he successfully designed a novel protein in 2003 that had no prior existence in nature. This achievement marked a significant milestone in synthetic biology, demonstrating that scientists could create entirely new proteins using known building blocks. Baker’s research group has since developed an impressive array of imaginative protein designs, each with potential applications in medicine, bioengineering, and environmental sustainability.

Images Courtesy: Britannica

Demis Hassabis and John M Jumper’s AlphaFold2
On the other hand, the work of Demis Hassabis and John M Jumper at Google DeepMind has transformed the field of protein structure prediction. In 2020, they developed an AI model known as AlphaFold2, which achieved a remarkable breakthrough by accurately predicting the three-dimensional structures of nearly all of the 200 million proteins identified by researchers. The implications of this work are profound, as understanding protein structures is crucial for drug discovery, disease understanding, and development of new therapies.

Left: DEMIS HASSABIS ; Right : JOHN M JUMPER

NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS
The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2024 has been awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton for their foundational discoveries that have enabled machine learning through artificial neural networks.

The Importance of Machine Learning
Machine Learning, a branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI), has gained immense significance in various fields, including research, finance, healthcare, and technology. It allows computers to analyse and interpret vast amounts of data, identify patterns, and improve performance over time without explicit programming. This capability has revolutionised how we process information and make decisions.

John Hopfield’s Contributions
John Hopfield, a professor at Princeton University, is known for inventing the Hopfield network, a type of recurrent neural network that uses a physics-based approach to saving and recreating patterns. The Hopfield network mimics the behaviour of physical systems and utilises the principles of atomic spin, where each atom acts as a tiny magnet, to represent and retrieve information.

His work laid the groundwork for subsequent developments in neural networks and machine learning, facilitating advancements in various applications, from image recognition to natural language processing.

Geoffrey Hinton: The ‘Godfather of AI’
Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the Godfather of AI, has played a pivotal role in advancing deep learning techniques. Hinton’s work has been instrumental in the development of artificial neural networks that are now at the forefront of machine learning applications. He built upon Hopfield’s foundational work by introducing the Boltzmann machine, a type of stochastic recurrent neural network that can learn to recognise patterns in complex datasets.

NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSIOLOGY OR MEDICINE
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their groundbreaking discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.

The Significance of MicroRNA
MicroRNAs are small, non-coding RNA molecules that play a crucial role in regulating gene expression. They are involved in various cellular processes, including development, differentiation, and response to environmental signals. The discovery of microRNAs has significantly enhanced our understanding of how genes are regulated, particularly in multicellular organisms like humans.

Victor Ambros currently serves as the Silverman Professor of Natural Science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, while Gary Ruvkun is currently a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, where he continues to explore the roles of microRNAs in gene regulation.

Ambros and Ruvkun have shed light on the complex regulatory networks that govern gene expression, providing insights that are crucial for understanding developmental processes and disease mechanisms.

Since its inception in 1901, the Nobel Prize is presented annually, with the Nobel Assembly, consisting of 50 professors at the Karolinska Institute, responsible for the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, while the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the prizes in Chemistry and Physics.

The tradition of awarding the Nobel Prizes has continued for over a century, with 117 prizes awarded between 1901 and 2023.