Protein Unlocked.

2024 Chemistry Prize was awarded to David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper for their contributions to how protein folds and unfolds (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, 2024). Let’s see why Nobel Prize was awarded to them and history of unraveling protein structure.

First Steps

Protein folding and unfolding was a closed box for scientists until 1969. Since it is the governing body on the living organisms, it was fascinating to work with them but at the same time it was very frustrating not to understand them properly.

In 1969, a scientist, Christian Anfinsen proposed a theory about protein folding which he proposed that protein 3D conformations entirely governed by the sequence of amino acids. Because he saw the same folding pattern of a protein after unfolding.

However, there was a catch here. If a protein composed of even 100 amino acids only, Cyrus Levinthal found that there will be 10^47 different three dimensional structures that a. protein can fold. How do they fold instantly when they have that much conformations?

Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction (CASP)

In 1994, a new competition started worldwide in order to better understand and incentivise the development of technologies. Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction (CASP for short). They were sending the amino acid sequences which protein composed of and asks from scientists to predict its three-dimensional…