DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, and researcher John Jumper have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their invention of AlphaFold an artificial intelligence tool that predicts protein structure from amino acids. They have this great honor with another scientist, David Baker, the other half of the Nobel was given to him thanks to his work in computational protein design.

The Nobel Committee praised their achievements as a pivotal moment in biochemistry, noting, “This discovery fulfills a 50-year-old dream: “In particular, the project is focused on using computers to predict protein structures based on sequences of amino acid.” AlphaFold was launched in late 2020 and has since brought about monumental breakthroughs by predicting the structures of almost all proteins that have been discovered – around 200 million by 2022. Currently, the application of this tool is very popular in research laboratories of the world; more than 2 million researchers from 190 countries have used predictive models.

Hassabis founded DeepMind together with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman in 2010 and Google purchased DeepMind in 2014 for $ 400 million. In January, DeepMind was combined with Google Brain forming Google DeepMind that intended to improve AI research work.

The applications of AlphaFold are in drug discovery, diseases, and synthetic biology, which requires major fundamental information they could offer for the future of biochemistry. As Heiner Linke, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry said, “Both discoveries are revealing enormous possibilities.” This accomplishment represents a major breakthrough in the synergy between AI and life sciences, demonstrating that new breakthroughs may be substituted into conventional existing issues in science.