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Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

nobelprize.org

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Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#141

Post by mrguyorama »

dsign wrote: post #59
bonoboTP wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nobel prize is aimed at the general public. It has a kind of late 19th century progressive humanistic ethos. It's science outreach. This way, at least once a year, the everyday layperson hears about scientific discoveries. The Nobel isn't a vehicle to recognize hundreds of thousands of deeply technical scientific researchers. How could it be? They have to pick a symbolic figurehead to represent a breakthrough. Th…

> The Nobel prize is aimed at the general public... Which is okay. The Nobel prize is okay. > This way, at least once a year, the everyday layperson hears about scientific discoveries. Spot on. The problem we have is that the everyday layperson hears very little about scientific discoveries. The scientists themselves, one in a million of them, can get a Nobel prize. The rest, if they are lucky, get a somewhat okay sa…

At least one American Nobel laureate has had to sell his nobel prize medal to pay for medical costs in their old age.

Just insane.

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#142

Post by jsnell »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #123
patall wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He may still win literature this year.

I can only predict a more prestigious prize on the horizon in the future. Isn't sama on track to end up with more financial resources than Nobel had at his disposal? Plus I think he's got enough of a philanthropic streak which can prove to be not so shabby. There could very well be a foundation someday awarding the Altman Prize well into the 22nd century. Whether or not his most dynamic legacy would be something as s…

The Nobel prize's prestige comes from its history, not from the size of the monetary award.

For an example, the Millennium Technology Prize is awarded every two years and the prize money is slightly higher than the Nobel prize (1M EUR vs 0.94M EUR). The achievements it's been awarded for tend to be much more practical, immediate and understandable than the Nobel prize achievements. The next one should be awarded in a couple of weeks.

And when that happens, it'll get 1/10th the publicity a Nobel prize gets, because the Nobel prize is older than any living human and has been accumulating prestige all that time, while the Millennium prize is only 20 years old.

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#143

Post by throw310822 »

nextworddev wrote: post #135
singularity2001 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whose father was one of the leading local industrialists (installing the first electric lighting for the 1885 Munich Oktoberfest)

It’s fascinating how the affluent backgrounds of many famous scientists and entrepreneurs are downplayed. Eg Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, etc

I would be very happy to be able to multiply my parents'/family's money by whatever factor Bezos, Gates or Musk have multiplied theirs.

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#144

Post by j7ake »

aithrowawaycomm wrote: post #101

I think putting AlphaFold here was premature; it might not age well. AlphaFold is an impressive achievement but it simply has not "cracked the code for protein folding" - about 1/3rd of its predictions are too uncertain to be usable, it says nothing about dynamics, suffers from the same ML problems of failing on uncommon structures, and I was surprised to learn that many of its predictions are incorrect because it ig…

I would say alphafold is to structure prediction as crispr is to gene editing.

Crispr did not solve gene editing either, but has been made accessible to the broad biochemistry and biology researchers to use.

Both similar impact and changed the field significantly.

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#145

Post by DevX101 »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #137
DevX101 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nature of scientific work has changed significantly since 1895, when the Nobel Prizes were established. 100 years ago, lots of scientific work really were driven forward largely by a singular person. That's rarely true today for groundbreaking research. I don't know if this means the Nobel needs to change or we need a another prize that reflects the collaborative work of modern science.

> The nature of scientific work has changed significantly since 1895, when the Nobel Prizes were established. 100 years ago, lots of scientific work really were driven forward largely by a singular person. That's rarely true today for groundbreaking research. The question is: is this a necessity for doing good science today, or rather an artifact of how important research is organized today (i.e. an artifact of the b…

So I did a mini research project on Claude to answer your question. From 1900-1930, 87% of Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry and Physiology/Medicine were awarded to individual contributions, 13% were awarded to collaborative contributions.

This ratio has flipped in the past 30 years, from 1994-2023, where 17% prizes were individual, 83% collaborative.

So I'd say yes, collaborative work is increasingly a requirement to do groundbreaking research today. The organizational structures and funding are a part of the reason as you mention. But it's also that modern scientific problems are more complex. I used to have a professor that used to say about biology "the easy problems have been solved". While I think that's dismissive to some of the ingenious experiments done in the past, there's some truth to it.

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#146

Post by aithrowawaycomm »

InkCanon wrote: post #107
aithrowawaycomm wrote: post #101

I think putting AlphaFold here was premature; it might not age well. AlphaFold is an impressive achievement but it simply has not "cracked the code for protein folding" - about 1/3rd of its predictions are too uncertain to be usable, it says nothing about dynamics, suffers from the same ML problems of failing on uncommon structures, and I was surprised to learn that many of its predictions are incorrect because it ig…

I think looking back five years from now, this will be viewed as another Kissinger/Obama but wrt STEM. Given far too prematurely under pressure to keep up with the Joneses/chase the hype.

I am not so confident or dismissive: the real problem is that testing millions of predictions (or any fairly bold scientific development like AlphaFols) takes time, and that time simply has not elapsed. Some of the criticisms I identified might be low-hanging fruit that in 5 years will be seen as minor corrections - but we're still discovering the things that need to be corrected. It is concerning that the prize announcement itself is either grossly overstated:

  With its help, they have been able to predict the structure of virtually all the 200 million proteins that researchers have identified [the word 'virtually' is stretched into meaninglessness]
or vague, could have been done with other tools, and hardly Nobel-worthy:

  Among a myriad of scientific applications, researchers can now better understand antibiotic resistance and create images of enzymes that can decompose plastic.
I am seriously wondering if they took Google / DeepMind press releases at face value.

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#147

Post by LightBug1 »

throw310822 wrote: post #143
nextworddev wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s fascinating how the affluent backgrounds of many famous scientists and entrepreneurs are downplayed. Eg Warren Buffet, Jeff Bezos, etc

I would be very happy to be able to multiply my parents'/family's money by whatever factor Bezos, Gates or Musk have multiplied theirs.

The multiplier would be significantly different.

Think the Wright Brothers first aeroplane vs a rocket ship.

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#149

Post by eig »

singularity2001 wrote: post #126
eig wrote: post #117

I think I disagree with most of the comments here stating it’s premature to give the Nobel to AlphaFold. I’m in biotech academia and it has changed things already. Yes the protein folding problem isn’t “solved” but no problem in biology ever is. Comparing to previous bio/chem Nobel winners like Crispr, touch receptors, quantum dots, click chemistry, I do think AlphaFold already has reached sufficient level of impact.

>> I do think AlphaFold already has reached sufficient level of impact. how so?

Well I'm sure one could look at number of published papers etc, but that metric is a lot to do with hype and I see it as a lagging indicator.

A better one is seeing my grad-school friends with zero background in comp-sci or math, presenting their cell-biology results with AlphaFold in conferences and at lab meetings. They are not protein folding people either- just molecular biologists trying to present more evidence of docking partners, functional groups in their pathway of interest.

It reminds me of when Crispr came out. There were ways to edit DNA before Crispr, but its was tough to do right and required specialized knowledge. After Crispr came out, even non-specialists like me in tangential fields could get started.

Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction

#150

Post by afthonos »

myworkinisgood wrote: post #131
ascorbic wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a case of shying away from it: the rules of the prize don't allow it.

rules of the prize can be changed.

Can they? I mean, in the sense that you can yolo anything, sure, but the prizes were designed in a time when it was (more) reasonable to award them to individuals, and they are defined in a will. There may not be a mechanism for updating the standards.
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