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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

#321

Post by stonemetal12 »

adastra22 wrote: post #256
stonemetal12 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those 10k would have the same background? We can pretend Bezos' dad raised him in a "normal" middle class background then randomly dropped 300K on him, or we can acknowledge he is the business equivalent of an Olympic athlete.

I think you are agreeing with the poster you are responding to, right? Bezos is the equivalent of an Olympic athlete: a combination of innate talent as well as opportunity.

More or less. Money provides an environment where high achievement becomes possible, it isn't just start up funds.

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

#323

Post by mikhailfranco »

medo_baayou wrote: post #161
ThePhysicist wrote: post #67

Demis Hasabis has a really interesting and unusual CV for a nobel laureate [1], he started his career in AI game programming (he worked e.g. on Popoulous II, Syndicate, Theme Park for Bullfrog, and later for Lionhead Studios on Black & White) before doing a PhD in neuroscience, becoming an entrepreneur and starting DeepMind. I would say this is a refreshing and highly uncommon pick for a nobel prize, really cool to s…

don't forget that he was IM 2300 rated chess player at 13 yo

Maybe Ken Rogoff should get the Economics prize :)

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

#325

Post by boxed »

flobosg wrote: post #196
boxed wrote: post #89

I think it's still too early to know if AlphaFold is a massively overfitted statistical model that will utterly fail on novel structures.

AlphaFold2 has correctly predicted novel folds: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-022-03357-1

Well... maybe. What I mean by novel fold would be something that isn't a product of evolution, because that's going to be incremental modifications to existing structures. That's why overfitting can be especially devious in this scenario.

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

#326

Post by 77pt77 »

mk_stjames wrote: post #218
ThePhysicist wrote: post #67

Demis Hasabis has a really interesting and unusual CV for a nobel laureate [1], he started his career in AI game programming (he worked e.g. on Popoulous II, Syndicate, Theme Park for Bullfrog, and later for Lionhead Studios on Black & White) before doing a PhD in neuroscience, becoming an entrepreneur and starting DeepMind. I would say this is a refreshing and highly uncommon pick for a nobel prize, really cool to s…

I'm always interested in hearing about these people who go and get a PhD in an unrelated field to their original studies, often years after leaving university and working in an industry. Here it says Hasabis did an undergraduate degree in a computer science program, and them spent a decade working on computer games at studios, and then somehow just rocked up to a university and asked to do a PhD in neuroscience. I fe…

> tried to go back and ask to do a PhD in, say, Physics - I'd be promptly told to go fuck myself

Only if you need money.

If you pay the tuition they'll receive you with open arms.

I've seen this for a guy is his mid to late 30s.

As everything in the states, it's completely pay to play and largely pay to win.

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

#327

Post by jhbadger »

svara wrote: post #318
jhbadger wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even drugs made by combinatorial chemistry still generally end up being analogues of natural products even if they aren't derived from them. As Leslie Orgel said "Evolution is cleverer than you are"; chemists are unlikely to discover a mechanism of action that millions of years of evolution hasn't already found.

I... Don't think that's right? Although I would appreciate being corrected with some good sources on this. It's a fast moving field and combinatorial chemistry is still new enough that many recently published structures wouldn't have used it. I'm well aware of the impact of natural products and particularly plant secondary metabolites in drug discovery. I'm also aware of combinatorial synthesis occasionally hitting s…

Perhaps we are using "structure" in different senses. Yes, it is possible to generate a molecule with a chemical structure unlike any biological molecule and have it bind to a protein, but it can only do so if its 3D structure is analogous to what naturally binds there. Natural products are a source of drugs because evolution has already done this work for us.

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

#328

Post by tim333 »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #139

Looks like science is out, black box prediction is in. It's like the era of epicycles all over again. Oh well. Fellow realists, see you all 1500 years from now!

Dunno. It's a tool to try to figure the shape of molecules in a similar way that a cryo-electron microscope is a tool for that. Not the end of science imho.

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

#329

Post by tim333 »

ggm wrote: post #293

As a computer scientist who is oppositional to AGI boom-bubble mania, it was easy to decry the Nobel in physics. But, contextually given who Murray Gell-Mann was and what field he was in (astrophysics) I feel a very strong Gell-Mann Effect here because I am happy to accept THIS use of computational systems to advance (bio)chemistry is worthy, and I find myself wondering why I am so uncritical about it?

Alpha fold gives a definite advance in our understanding of the world, chatgpt and similar not so much?

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

#330

Post by 77pt77 »

djtango wrote: post #302
concordDance wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "necessary, but not sufficient" is unintuitive to most people. Billionaires who come from working class families are almost unheard of, but probably more than half the self made (for a definition, something like multiplied familial investments by at least 100x maybe?) billionaires come from upper middle class families. I wonder if they are actually more likely to come from upper middle class (where parents are hi…

Yes... Like Taylor Swift To my mind, Joe Rogan is the most recent embodiment of the American dream which is why I think he is so popular

> To my mind, Joe Rogan is the most recent embodiment of the American dream

Look how that turned out...

Maybe the dream is more like a nightmare.

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