The Nobel Committee announces the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024, David Baker, Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper. Linked to Fold.it, computational protein design and protein structure prediction using AI with Google DeepMind AlphaFold.

During lecture for University of Oxford, Dr. Demis Hassabis credits Fold.it players inspiring him to build AlphaFold. Hassabis mentions papers in Nature and Nature Structural and Molecular Biology of which Harald Feldmann, chairman of Truus Schut Stichting (Truus Schut Foundation) is co-author.

An NTF2 ligand binder generated using AI and computational protein design. Chosen as design of the month by Fold.it. Made by Harald Feldmann of the Truus Schut Stichting (Truus Schut Foundation)

Proteins like to fold into a state of lowest possible energy. In protein design, software is used to find the lowest state, but limitations in algorithms introduce artifacts where a so called 'local minimum' is selected rather than the absolute minimum. Imagine a lake in the mountains, thinking it is the lake at sea level. By making a map of the landscape you find all other lakes nearby which may also not be at sealevel, but you may also find the sea itself. A Machine Learning method that can map and optimize the energy landscape is subject of the publication 'Protein sequence design by conformational landscape optimization' in the 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences', PNAS : https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2017228118 to which Harald Feldmann contributed (see supplemental data PDF).

DNA for three designer proteïns ordered in search of a cure for COVID19

First steps in designing a cure for COVID-19, designerproteïns.

Harald is co-author of this paper on the use of Cryo-EM for protein research.

Describes the topic of Nature paper 'De novo protein design by citizen scientists' and the role than DNA, proteïns and computers played in that. Harald Feldmann worked on five of these successful designs.

ATC Netherlands donates workstations to Truus Schut Foundation, suitable for 3d design.