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In 2003, this year’s chemistry laureate David Baker succeeded in designing a new protein that was unlike any other protein. This was the first step in something that can only be described as an extraordinary development. A few of the many spectacular proteins created in Baker’s laboratory using his computer software Rosetta can be seen in the picture. He also released the code for Rosetta, so a global research community has continued to develop the software, finding new areas of application. Baker’s research group has produced one imaginative protein creation after another, including proteins that can be used as pharmaceuticals, vaccines, nanomaterials and tiny sensors.

BREAKING NEWS The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2024 #NobelPrize in Chemistry with one half to David Baker “for computational protein design” and the other half jointly to Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper “for protein structure prediction.”

This year’s medicine laureates Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun studied a relatively unassuming 1 mm long roundworm, C. elegans. Despite its small size, C. elegans possesses many specialised cell types such as nerve and muscle cells also found in larger, more complex animals, making it a useful model for investigating how tissues develop and mature in multicellular organisms. Read how the 2024 medicine laureates’ investigations into C. elegans revealed an entirely new dimension to gene regulation: bit.ly/4dlPE6f #NobelPrize

BREAKING NEWS The 2024 #NobelPrize in Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.