The U.S. National Science Foundation congratulates David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper on being awarded the 2024 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Baker and his colleagues revolutionized protein design enabling the creation of protein structures never seen in nature, many of which have potential as therapeutics or treatments, new materials or in other applications. Hassabis and Jumper similarly revolutionized protein prediction with the creation of AlphaFold software, enabling the determination of a protein’s structure from its amino acid sequence alone. NSF is immensely proud of the decades of fundamental research support and infrastructure investments that led to these advances.
NSF has supported the Protein Data Bank (PDB), the critical repository for structure data for large biological molecules that enabled the work of all the awardees, for nearly five decades. PDB now contains over 200,000 structures from proteins to DNA and RNA. Baker used this library as a knowledge base for his first protein structure design algorithms which became part of the Rosetta family of tools — and later his protein design tools — for which his portion of the Nobel Prize is being awarded. The PDB also provided the training library for AlphaFold, a deep learning, artificial intelligence-powered software designed by Hassabis, Jumper and the DeepMind team for which they earned half of the prize.
In addition to its support of PDB, NSF has continuously supported Baker’s career since his Young Investigator award in 1994. The interdisciplinary nature of the work and the potential impact of protein design is exemplified by the broad nature of NSF support received by Baker that has come from NSF Directorates for Biological Sciences, Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences and Computer and Information Science and Engineering.
In 2003, Baker and colleagues were able to design the first completely novel globular protein with atomic level accuracy. In 2008, Baker and colleagues reported the first design of an enzyme — a protein that initiates a reaction in a cell. Several of the proteins designed by Baker and his team are already moving toward being used to treat Celiac disease and cancers.
“Protein design holds transformative potential to address societal challenges by enabling the discovery of once unimaginable structures,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “Decades of federal investments in fundamental research and infrastructure, combined with industry innovation, have yielded tools that significantly impact everyday life. Baker’s work continues to break new ground — as he recently received 5,000 hours of computing time on NSF’s Frontera supercomputer through the NSF-led National AI Research Resource pilot — to create even more advanced biological models.”
NSF’s support of Baker also has helped enable a wide range of broader societal impacts, including the training of a legion of students and fellows that are now contributing to the field of biotechnology and synthetic biomaterials in academia and industry around the world. In addition to those he trained directly, Baker’s early and long-standing commitment to open access and sharing policies fostered development of a broad community of developers and users that have accelerated the pace of discovery and innovation in the field.
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