I instantly thought of Futurama's Professor Farnsworth. "This experiment may just win me the nobel prize!" "In what field?" "I don't care. They all pay the same."
I met Demis during his previous career in the video games industry. Genuinely lovely guy, insanely gifted and I'm really happy to see him recognised in such a way.
Gorgeous tie! And that compliment comes from someone who in 62 years never wore a tie😉 My heart always makes a little jump when I find a new periodic video in my feed! They make my day! They really do!
To extend an answer to Brady’s question around 4:00, it’s actually quite the opposite-the stuff they are made of is important, but actually the shape of it and how it’s folded is the critical factor, especially if you extend “shape” into other regimes (like the “shape” of charge distribution, for example). In biology this is the principe of “form determines function.” This is well demonstrated with antibodies: when a B cell in your immune system detects a foreign object, it needs to make an antibody where its tips are specially crafted to only grab onto that foreign object in order to “recognize” it in the future. But your body has many B cells in it, and also different bodies have their own B cells-it turns out that two different B cells will grab the same object to identify but make different protein sequences for it, each with the ability to “grab” and detect the foreign object.
I don't know if this is at all an accurate picture or not, but I think of proteins and the work they do as being more mechanical than chemical - like little machines. And so of course the shape matters a lot - you can take all the pieces of a car, but if they aren't assembled into the right shape, the car's not going to do its job.
I learned it as "proteins are like furniture". If you take a chair and change its material, it might become a better or worse chair, but probably quite subtly. If you take a chair and change its shape, its function will change immediately. Possibly for the better, but more likely for the worse.
The way in which the shape affects the function can be thought of much the same way the shape of a machine affects its function (take for instance a drill vs a sander). Proteins really function a bit like molecular robotics and machinery. They are not static. Very much like an automated production line in a factory, can take a bit of molecular matter, move it around, and then do something with it. Add it to something else, remove part of it, reshape it, bring it into position for the next step, etc. Just so do proteins function. DNA is used as a template for building amino acids and proteins. And the functions of proteins can include anything from structural, through metabolic processes, to DNA manipulation and replication. That is why the shapes are so important.
@@crappymeal What powers which process exactly? Protein folding is largely driven by the attraction/repulsion between different parts of the protein (via coulomb interactions, dispersion forces, additional covalent bonds like disulfide bonds, etc.) and the hydrophobic effect (which itself is mostly driven by the entropy of water molecules).
@@crappymeal The power for the process... Hmm. I'm not so clued up that I can go into it authoritatively at that level, but ATP and KREBs cycle are probably involved somewhere right at the start. Also I recently saw a bit about the way the molecular motor of cilia works, and part of it showed how energy released by the bonding process re-used for the next step. So in the end I think every scrap of energy is taken as far as possible. It's a huge, highly refined system. And it's a super complex topic. Way beyond me for the most part.
Demis Hassabis is also a strong chess player. Someone(I can't recall his name) posted a short video on twitter from a chess + poker night, where Demis was sitting at the poker table with Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Peter Svidler. Vishy, MVL and Giri was also seen mingling in the room. This event took place just a day or two after the prize was announced.
I'm a PhD student at UW right now! I am working on a project with some post docs in the Baker lab (although I myself am a chemical engineer. Protein science was never my forte). This was very exciting news around the office of course , and its really incredible what can be done with proteins now. This is the age of the protein!
The structure is important because it *determines* what a protein does and how it behaves chemically. This is obviously true for structural proteins, but also for enzymes and hormones.
This is a really big deal. Protein folding is so complex it would have seemed unthinkable to be able to simulate it only a couple of decades ago. The implications for medicine, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and so many other fields are limitless. We're a big step closer to being able to design molecules to perform chemical synthesis at will.
Protein's are crazy. I'm married to a micro-biologist and have been leaning from her for 40 years. Proteins do things like detecting DNA damage and repair. WHAT!! Detecting that the DNA is damaged? Then repairing it! Wow
Thanks for this video. I like the professor's analogy of observing chess games to work out the rules. That makes a lot of sense! Keep up the great work, and thank you for your interesting and inspiring content!
I read somewhere that since there is no Nobel prize in biology, there is an unofficial tradition to dedicate the chemistry prize every other year to biology-ish chemistry, and this was such a year. I haven't fact checked this.
Tbh biology has essentially annexed the nobel prize for medicine and is quickly taking over the nobel prize for chemistry. Even the physics prize this year is based on biology fundementals.
I wish someday I could meet Sir Martyn Poliakoff. I know it will be one of the impossible dreams. I'm not qualified to be in the same room as him, haha. I'm a Brazilian who never had the opportunity to graduate but was always passionate about chemistry. I've been following Periodic Videos since the beginning and absolutely love every episode and everyone involved in it. I've researched a lot about Sir Martyn over the past few years and he really is fascinating. I hope the students know that and enjoy his company and knowledge. Big warm hug from a Brazilian fan, Sir Martyn, and everyone who makes this channel possible.
I feel the Pereodic Videos team needs a nobel for popularizing chemistry and making learning chemistry fun and exciting🥳. Thank you so much for the regualr videos.
I wonder if this will help our understanding of prion disease given that it's so deadly and is caused my proteins within the brain folding up into the incorrect shapes.
Just like how you could allow seti to run a program on your computer around the 90s/2000s, you can also download a program that runs in the background that computers protein folding. Distributed computing is still a thing you can do now
Some additional context on the Professor's description of the winners: John Jumper is a chemist, not just a computer scientist. He got his PhD in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2017.
There are proteins that are difficult to obtain crystals for, or to obtain high-resolution X-ray diffraction for. AlphaFold makes an interesting starting point for these cases and accelerates the research.
The quality of the initial guess can make an enormous difference in the speed of finding a structure for which the calculated density map matches the observed density map from the diffraction experiment.
Something you didn't mention that is really important... Proteins have an "active shape", a 3D shape, if they lose that shape, they lose their bodily function, and that could cause a disease in the worst case scenario or a reduction of effectiveness of the physiological process they make part of (like alcohol dehydrogenase deficiency) The shape can be lost because physical or chemical factors like heat and pH (though if you reach to the point of getting your proteins change by this you have other things to worry about), but normally in our bodies, shapes can be lost by changes in the protein's sequence due to mutations, interactions with free radicals that react with the moieties of the amino-acids, or on purposefully by our own cells in a process called post-translational modifications. Knowing how a change in a protein's sequence can affect the active shape of that protein, can be helpful to study disease progression or possible targets for new therapies.
I've always told people: You aren't going to lose your job to an AI. You are going to lose your job to the guy who knows how to use AI better than you do. I fully expect that to be extensible to awarding future Nobel Prizes.
Prof Poliakoff is the epitome of a scientist. the kind who very willingly admits, "...i don't know much about it." and then goes on to explain what the thing he doesn't know much about, does.
We pondered this, 30 years ago. It's just replaying previous wet lab work rather than making predictions based on chaperone proteins, cytoskeleton, physical chemistry.
Having been part of different "folding at home" groups, but after some of the British groups are no longer functional I haven't done much "folding at home" in a number of years, along with the price of electricity it's not so cheap to leave my PC running all day every day compared to 10 years ago
@@eliasross4576 my core2 quad pulled around 100W while my current ryzen 5 is set about 90W so not much difference between them but price of electricity is about 8x the price of 10+ years ago. And that makes a massive difference
This is very interesting to me because I have a disability that impacts the collagen in nearly every part of my body, they recently found that people with this disorder have lots of protein fragments in our blood, so I wonder if these techniques might eventually be used to help explain what's going on.
It more chemistry than the physics prize was related to physics. To me this, chemistry prize is chemistry while the physics prize is computer science or physiology at the closest to an actual Nobel prize.
I did it maybe 15 years ago and built a computer with three graphics cards in 2020 and did more during the worst of the pandemic. Might start it up again in cold weather this winter.
I was confused at first because Washington University in St. Louis handles Folding@Home, but the American among the Nobel winners is at University of Washington in the state of Washington.
Well its due to bonds, primarily hydrogen, formed by the aminoacids that folds the proteins, which has been known for some time now, now you can know what protein is formed without examining the end product. The more interesting question is how the organism knows which proteins to form, which I presume can be traced back to some form of selection, though I am unsure.
In 1989 during my biology HS I said that this is the future of protein research and computers will help us model the complex structures of proteins from a chain of aminoacids. Unfortunately at the time it was considered science fiction and impossible
I’m sure you’ve thought of this yourself already, but could you please make new 118 videos of every element? Updated versions with better graphics? Starting from hydrogen 🤔 I’ve read about all the elements of periodic table as I love trivia and I’d like to go through them ones more with videos.
A lot of people don't like the computer science aspect to the chemistry prize...but let me tell you. The protein folding problem is a classic chemistry problem, to the point where it was discussed in my *physical chemistry* class, (statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics) as a kind of paradox. For every rotatable bond that a polypeptide has, you can approximate the number of possible conformations as # = 3^n where n is the number of rotatable bonds. If you only consider the peptide bonds, for a protein 10 amino acids long there are almost 20k possible conformations by that approximation and it scales exponentially. 11 amino acids is nearly 60k. Despite that, proteins all seem to pick out a single conformation in vivo. Structure = function, so they HAVE to, otherwise their function would change. And they find this structure near instantaneously. It kinda breaks our understanding of statistical mechanics! That's why I'm happy to see this nobel prize.
Demis definitely deserves a Nobel prize, but he is not a chemist, so does he really deserve the chemistry prize over everyone else regardless of how important his work has been to the field?
AlfaFold was/is big breakthrough, but the structures are actually still relatively crude, you cannot rely on important details. And there are cases, when it produces rubish. Thats all fine. What I did not like was the PR when it came out. It was presented as solved problem. Which is not. And it made life more difficult to the experimentalists in applications for grants, which are often judged by not quite experts. "You want to do structure of X? But there is the AlfaFold structure already..." So, it is great tool, but over-hyped.
I've not done my searches yet, so forgive me, but is there any suggestion that (as seems to be the norm for the Nobel Committee) there was probably a lady involved who worked all this out and then one or more of the blokes got the award and credit?
Respected Sir I am interested to know about the difference in structure of proteins of human beings and other animals as well as the way it takes to build the block structures
There are no great differences between the proteins of humans and other animals. Remember that humans are animals, just one branch of the tree among many, and a lot of biochemistry had to be worked out by natural selection a long time ago so that organisms could benefit from the basic functions that take place in our cells - functions that are often shared between many even quite distantly related species.
Another 2 nobel prizes for Cambridge university, Dennis Hassabis went to Queens college. But the professor must be happy that another member of King's won a nobel prize even if it was in physics. From another member of King's college. Also did the professor know Geoffrey Hinton while they were at King's, though different years and fields
If machine learning can find a way to fold proteins that enables *me* to have epic hair like Professor Martyn Poliakoff, I'll be as happy as a clam at high tide!
I made a joke like months ago saying stuff like "What? Knots not important? Protein Knot Physics?" And yes, obviously it's biology, and math, and even more so, chemistry, but as we know, a "Good chemist can do anything !"
For me, proteins were always a lot of nothing (structure), some poorly made, with active terminals. Thank you very much for the video. By the way, deep learning is neural networks in several layers.
Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit negligent to report on models like this as AI? Yes, I'm aware that it is *technically* AI as it's currently defined and these models are trained in much the same way models like chat GPT are. Here's the issue though: in common parlance AI is just one thing. This nebulous computer idea that talks to you and makes images and is also siri now I guess. When people hear AI they don't think bespoke models that can do one task very well (such as aloha fold), they think things in the general sphere of chat GPT and it's ilk that are vaguely claimed to do anything. This then reinforces the conmen cramming AI into everything and claiming it can do tasks it is not designed to which further muddies the water for the layperson. I think it would behoove science communicators to draw a distinction between such models and what people now refer to as AI to not further contribute to the bubble and give these models the actual recognition they deserve.
The topic of teaching is very important to me. I think that at least one year, the Prize should go to some really prolific teacher - one who has taught a lot of chemistry to a very large number of people, and who has made the subject more accessible. Wouldn't you agree?
Please let the professor know that research shows his motor and related health issues might benefit substantially from isolated nicotine supplementation.
This is horrific and will only lead to people understanding even less about medicine and science in general. Never forget that during the search for the blue LED, the dude became the world-leading expert on the machine he used because absolutely nobody else actually understood how it worked.
Protein tertiary structure forms due to the free radicals like OH- which may form bonds. An important example is the tire for vehicles. And the germination of a seed, radical and shoot.
We need a video on how the professor organizes and funds the correct tie for the occasion
We need the professor to be on OnlyFans and every morning show us how his hair begins the day
Professor was talking about this topic somewhere in the first series of PV I think.
@@rbapl lol
Everyone has their own unique gifts. I say our professor found his :)
Wouldn't that be an Objectivity video instead?
I instantly thought of Futurama's Professor Farnsworth.
"This experiment may just win me the nobel prize!"
"In what field?"
"I don't care. They all pay the same."
I met Demis during his previous career in the video games industry. Genuinely lovely guy, insanely gifted and I'm really happy to see him recognised in such a way.
Millenials are so great a back-patting. It's like, it's like... a science!
@@modaljazz59 We're both Gen X, thanks
@@TheBroz Millenials > Gex X and Gen Z
@@modaljazz59how dare those pesky millennials appreciate other people's accomplishments. It's an absolute disgrace.
@@modaljazz59what is lil bros problem😂
Gorgeous tie! And that compliment comes from someone who in 62 years never wore a tie😉 My heart always makes a little jump when I find a new periodic video in my feed! They make my day! They really do!
To extend an answer to Brady’s question around 4:00, it’s actually quite the opposite-the stuff they are made of is important, but actually the shape of it and how it’s folded is the critical factor, especially if you extend “shape” into other regimes (like the “shape” of charge distribution, for example). In biology this is the principe of “form determines function.” This is well demonstrated with antibodies: when a B cell in your immune system detects a foreign object, it needs to make an antibody where its tips are specially crafted to only grab onto that foreign object in order to “recognize” it in the future. But your body has many B cells in it, and also different bodies have their own B cells-it turns out that two different B cells will grab the same object to identify but make different protein sequences for it, each with the ability to “grab” and detect the foreign object.
Exactly. Prions for example are misfolded proteins and can spread easily by causing other proteins to become misfolded thus resulting in disease
I don't know if this is at all an accurate picture or not, but I think of proteins and the work they do as being more mechanical than chemical - like little machines. And so of course the shape matters a lot - you can take all the pieces of a car, but if they aren't assembled into the right shape, the car's not going to do its job.
I learned it as "proteins are like furniture". If you take a chair and change its material, it might become a better or worse chair, but probably quite subtly. If you take a chair and change its shape, its function will change immediately. Possibly for the better, but more likely for the worse.
How cool, I didn't know each body found it's own solutions to that.
The way in which the shape affects the function can be thought of much the same way the shape of a machine affects its function (take for instance a drill vs a sander). Proteins really function a bit like molecular robotics and machinery. They are not static. Very much like an automated production line in a factory, can take a bit of molecular matter, move it around, and then do something with it. Add it to something else, remove part of it, reshape it, bring it into position for the next step, etc. Just so do proteins function. DNA is used as a template for building amino acids and proteins. And the functions of proteins can include anything from structural, through metabolic processes, to DNA manipulation and replication. That is why the shapes are so important.
What powers the process, atomic bonds and attraction?
@@crappymeal What powers which process exactly? Protein folding is largely driven by the attraction/repulsion between different parts of the protein (via coulomb interactions, dispersion forces, additional covalent bonds like disulfide bonds, etc.) and the hydrophobic effect (which itself is mostly driven by the entropy of water molecules).
@@crappymeal The power for the process... Hmm. I'm not so clued up that I can go into it authoritatively at that level, but ATP and KREBs cycle are probably involved somewhere right at the start. Also I recently saw a bit about the way the molecular motor of cilia works, and part of it showed how energy released by the bonding process re-used for the next step. So in the end I think every scrap of energy is taken as far as possible. It's a huge, highly refined system. And it's a super complex topic. Way beyond me for the most part.
@@lunkel8108 I mean between different proteins, how does one travel distance to another location and find it's "workmate" and do "work"
@@Sq7Arno thanks, I started reading a bit into it and was out of my depth
Demis Hassabis is also a strong chess player. Someone(I can't recall his name) posted a short video on twitter from a chess + poker night, where Demis was sitting at the poker table with Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura and Peter Svidler. Vishy, MVL and Giri was also seen mingling in the room. This event took place just a day or two after the prize was announced.
Wow. Chess has been obsolete for years.
Everybody on that list except svidler has been in the world top 3 players, freaking neato.
@@modaljazz59 How has chess been obsolete?
I'm a PhD student at UW right now! I am working on a project with some post docs in the Baker lab (although I myself am a chemical engineer. Protein science was never my forte). This was very exciting news around the office of course , and its really incredible what can be done with proteins now. This is the age of the protein!
The structure is important because it *determines* what a protein does and how it behaves chemically.
This is obviously true for structural proteins, but also for enzymes and hormones.
form defines function
The professor’s hair is looking *magnificent* today.
Congrats to the winners 🎉
Reminds me of Dr. Emmett Brown
Love waking up to a new video from the professor!
Same!
I agree, it really is the best explanation that I have heard. Wisdom is very notorious. 😎👍🏼👏👏👏
Protein folding is important in understanding prion diseases.
This is a really big deal. Protein folding is so complex it would have seemed unthinkable to be able to simulate it only a couple of decades ago.
The implications for medicine, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing and so many other fields are limitless. We're a big step closer to being able to design molecules to perform chemical synthesis at will.
Protein's are crazy. I'm married to a micro-biologist and have been leaning from her for 40 years. Proteins do things like detecting DNA damage and repair. WHAT!! Detecting that the DNA is damaged? Then repairing it! Wow
I've known Demis Hassabis since the debut of Alphago in 2016 and it's great to see his contribution to other areas.
Thanks for this video. I like the professor's analogy of observing chess games to work out the rules. That makes a lot of sense! Keep up the great work, and thank you for your interesting and inspiring content!
Thank you for explaining the prize in a way I could understand.
whatsinmy AI fixes this. Nobel Chemistry Prize awarded.
I’ve never been so early to a video. How exciting that it’s protein folding!
WE NEED TO SEE THE TIE COLLECTION
I read somewhere that since there is no Nobel prize in biology, there is an unofficial tradition to dedicate the chemistry prize every other year to biology-ish chemistry, and this was such a year. I haven't fact checked this.
As a biochemist I think work in molecular biology is more chemistry than biology.
Tbh biology has essentially annexed the nobel prize for medicine and is quickly taking over the nobel prize for chemistry. Even the physics prize this year is based on biology fundementals.
I wish someday I could meet Sir Martyn Poliakoff. I know it will be one of the impossible dreams. I'm not qualified to be in the same room as him, haha. I'm a Brazilian who never had the opportunity to graduate but was always passionate about chemistry. I've been following Periodic Videos since the beginning and absolutely love every episode and everyone involved in it. I've researched a lot about Sir Martyn over the past few years and he really is fascinating. I hope the students know that and enjoy his company and knowledge. Big warm hug from a Brazilian fan, Sir Martyn, and everyone who makes this channel possible.
Happy to see a Professor's video again! Enjoyalable video hearing professor explanation.
I feel the Pereodic Videos team needs a nobel for popularizing chemistry and making learning chemistry fun and exciting🥳. Thank you so much for the regualr videos.
I wonder if this will help our understanding of prion disease given that it's so deadly and is caused my proteins within the brain folding up into the incorrect shapes.
Yay CASP! So good to see it mentioned here.
Just like how you could allow seti to run a program on your computer around the 90s/2000s, you can also download a program that runs in the background that computers protein folding. Distributed computing is still a thing you can do now
Some additional context on the Professor's description of the winners: John Jumper is a chemist, not just a computer scientist. He got his PhD in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2017.
Very interesting video Mr.Professor.❤
I was waiting for this video!
Will the physics video be done on the computerphile channel?
in sixty symbols
We’re actually going to post it on both Sixty Symbols and Computerphile.
That is one epic tea mug! Periodic-tastic!
There are proteins that are difficult to obtain crystals for, or to obtain high-resolution X-ray diffraction for. AlphaFold makes an interesting starting point for these cases and accelerates the research.
But can it decelerate upon arrival?
The quality of the initial guess can make an enormous difference in the speed of finding a structure for which the calculated density map matches the observed density map from the diffraction experiment.
I made it up. I love keeping scientists busy here. You never learn out.
Thanks for the video.
Something you didn't mention that is really important... Proteins have an "active shape", a 3D shape, if they lose that shape, they lose their bodily function, and that could cause a disease in the worst case scenario or a reduction of effectiveness of the physiological process they make part of (like alcohol dehydrogenase deficiency)
The shape can be lost because physical or chemical factors like heat and pH (though if you reach to the point of getting your proteins change by this you have other things to worry about), but normally in our bodies, shapes can be lost by changes in the protein's sequence due to mutations, interactions with free radicals that react with the moieties of the amino-acids, or on purposefully by our own cells in a process called post-translational modifications.
Knowing how a change in a protein's sequence can affect the active shape of that protein, can be helpful to study disease progression or possible targets for new therapies.
I've always told people: You aren't going to lose your job to an AI. You are going to lose your job to the guy who knows how to use AI better than you do.
I fully expect that to be extensible to awarding future Nobel Prizes.
Prof Poliakoff is the epitome of a scientist.
the kind who very willingly admits,
"...i don't know much about it."
and then goes on to explain what the thing he doesn't know much about,
does.
I just noticed after watching tons of videos is the prof is left handed
We pondered this, 30 years ago. It's just replaying previous wet lab work rather than making predictions based on chaperone proteins, cytoskeleton, physical chemistry.
@@Lion_McLionhead huh? what are you talking about
Having been part of different "folding at home" groups, but after some of the British groups are no longer functional I haven't done much "folding at home" in a number of years, along with the price of electricity it's not so cheap to leave my PC running all day every day compared to 10 years ago
I’d say CPU instructions per watt has gone down the last 10 years. Even if the price of electricity has doubled, CPUs are much more efficient.
@@eliasross4576 my core2 quad pulled around 100W while my current ryzen 5 is set about 90W so not much difference between them but price of electricity is about 8x the price of 10+ years ago. And that makes a massive difference
Both the physics and chemistry prizes went to Computer Science people this year. It really tells the story of the current state of sciences.
Surely the form that a molecule takes due to its structure and environment is chemistry?
Then you could say all of space-time is chemistry.
yeah. the basis of this is intra and inter molecular interactions, which is essentially a part of chemistry.
This is very interesting to me because I have a disability that impacts the collagen in nearly every part of my body, they recently found that people with this disorder have lots of protein fragments in our blood, so I wonder if these techniques might eventually be used to help explain what's going on.
It more chemistry than the physics prize was related to physics. To me this, chemistry prize is chemistry while the physics prize is computer science or physiology at the closest to an actual Nobel prize.
Today i learned Computerphile was a thing. I know what I’m binging this weekend
Enjoy
It's fascinating how *mechanical* functional proteins are. Like they run on some weird quanta of mechanical principles
Computer scientists are taking over the Nobels this year.
This is the kind of thing AI should be used for. Solving problems that humans struggle with.
So, wait. Does this mean all that time I was donating my CPU to Folding@Home in the aughts was wasted?
Twenty years ago I did some Folding at Home, do I get some of that money?
I did it maybe 15 years ago and built a computer with three graphics cards in 2020 and did more during the worst of the pandemic. Might start it up again in cold weather this winter.
I was confused at first because Washington University in St. Louis handles Folding@Home, but the American among the Nobel winners is at University of Washington in the state of Washington.
is there a way to determine how it does it rather than just a prediction.
Well its due to bonds, primarily hydrogen, formed by the aminoacids that folds the proteins, which has been known for some time now, now you can know what protein is formed without examining the end product. The more interesting question is how the organism knows which proteins to form, which I presume can be traced back to some form of selection, though I am unsure.
In 1989 during my biology HS I said that this is the future of protein research and computers will help us model the complex structures of proteins from a chain of aminoacids. Unfortunately at the time it was considered science fiction and impossible
I’m sure you’ve thought of this yourself already, but could you please make new 118 videos of every element? Updated versions with better graphics? Starting from hydrogen 🤔 I’ve read about all the elements of periodic table as I love trivia and I’d like to go through them ones more with videos.
We’re doing that already but not in order.
@@periodicvideos I’ll check it right away, thx for the quick response! 😎
A lot of people don't like the computer science aspect to the chemistry prize...but let me tell you. The protein folding problem is a classic chemistry problem, to the point where it was discussed in my *physical chemistry* class, (statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, and quantum mechanics) as a kind of paradox. For every rotatable bond that a polypeptide has, you can approximate the number of possible conformations as # = 3^n where n is the number of rotatable bonds. If you only consider the peptide bonds, for a protein 10 amino acids long there are almost 20k possible conformations by that approximation and it scales exponentially. 11 amino acids is nearly 60k. Despite that, proteins all seem to pick out a single conformation in vivo. Structure = function, so they HAVE to, otherwise their function would change. And they find this structure near instantaneously. It kinda breaks our understanding of statistical mechanics! That's why I'm happy to see this nobel prize.
Thank you for the wonderful video. I hope you find the occasion to wear your DNA tie for a video again!
Demis definitely deserves a Nobel prize, but he is not a chemist, so does he really deserve the chemistry prize over everyone else regardless of how important his work has been to the field?
Congratulations Dr Baker about your Nobel in chimistry Philippe Martin 😎 love and care about you
AlfaFold was/is big breakthrough, but the structures are actually still relatively crude, you cannot rely on important details. And there are cases, when it produces rubish. Thats all fine. What I did not like was the PR when it came out. It was presented as solved problem. Which is not. And it made life more difficult to the experimentalists in applications for grants, which are often judged by not quite experts. "You want to do structure of X? But there is the AlfaFold structure already..." So, it is great tool, but over-hyped.
Using AI for these problems feels like a proof by exhaustion in mathematics.
I've not done my searches yet, so forgive me, but is there any suggestion that (as seems to be the norm for the Nobel Committee) there was probably a lady involved who worked all this out and then one or more of the blokes got the award and credit?
Respected Sir
I am interested to know about the difference in structure of proteins of human beings and other animals as well as the way it takes to build the block structures
There are no great differences between the proteins of humans and other animals. Remember that humans are animals, just one branch of the tree among many, and a lot of biochemistry had to be worked out by natural selection a long time ago so that organisms could benefit from the basic functions that take place in our cells - functions that are often shared between many even quite distantly related species.
Another 2 nobel prizes for Cambridge university, Dennis Hassabis went to Queens college. But the professor must be happy that another member of King's won a nobel prize even if it was in physics. From another member of King's college. Also did the professor know Geoffrey Hinton while they were at King's, though different years and fields
If machine learning can find a way to fold proteins that enables *me* to have epic hair like Professor Martyn Poliakoff, I'll be as happy as a clam at high tide!
Just got those sweet sweet stacked disulphide genes.
Great now they'll be piling up at the traffic lights waiting for rows of $150,000 Cybertrucks to pass. Great!
When my curly hair finally goes all white, I will have to decide whether I will grow it out to match his hair.
@@tscoffey1my dad’s curly hair would do this if he doesn’t keep up with hair cuts. Lol
@@modaljazz59 what?
How did he fold his hair?
Lovely!
That mop lol. I love it
I hope, that in a decade, these techniques will be improved enough to make an effective treatments for prion diseases.
This was much more chemistry related than the physics prize was physics related.
I made a joke like months ago saying stuff like
"What? Knots not important? Protein Knot Physics?"
And yes, obviously it's biology, and math, and even more so, chemistry, but as we know, a "Good chemist can do anything !"
Is this related to Playstation 3 app "Folding @ home"?
Yes
Predictive software will never fully replace in-vitro experimentation, nor should it.
But it can get you in the ball park. You can use your resources better
Hence, the term “prediction”
That’s like saying the weather forecast can’t fully replace the weather.
Wanna cover your 21?
This just reminds me how worrisome prions disease is.
could this help create new drug therapies for cancers such as Lymphoma (all types includes non-Hodgkin's)?
Do you think there will ever be a dedicated Computer Science Nobel Prize?
For me, proteins were always a lot of nothing (structure), some poorly made, with active terminals. Thank you very much for the video. By the way, deep learning is neural networks in several layers.
We are nanotechnology!
Every cell is a self-replicating chemical factory. I just can't believe it all happened by chance.
Pls explain natural gases sugar and Alkohol Vera nitrogen potassium and sugar simply said thank you
Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit negligent to report on models like this as AI? Yes, I'm aware that it is *technically* AI as it's currently defined and these models are trained in much the same way models like chat GPT are. Here's the issue though: in common parlance AI is just one thing. This nebulous computer idea that talks to you and makes images and is also siri now I guess. When people hear AI they don't think bespoke models that can do one task very well (such as aloha fold), they think things in the general sphere of chat GPT and it's ilk that are vaguely claimed to do anything. This then reinforces the conmen cramming AI into everything and claiming it can do tasks it is not designed to which further muddies the water for the layperson. I think it would behoove science communicators to draw a distinction between such models and what people now refer to as AI to not further contribute to the bubble and give these models the actual recognition they deserve.
Physics is a product of Relativistic Quantum Physics.
Chemistry is a product of Physics.
Rosetta at home -david baker❤
At first I wondered what notoriously non biological aluminium had to do with protein folding.
Life finds a way
Surely the professor is aware of an amine, the root of the words are the same for ammino
I would like a video about the door behind the professor that is labeled “typefaces”.
Listen Dag Gano Kary Mullis Why I begann questioning HIV thank you
great minds
Ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates?
The topic of teaching is very important to me. I think that at least one year, the Prize should go to some really prolific teacher - one who has taught a lot of chemistry to a very large number of people, and who has made the subject more accessible. Wouldn't you agree?
Google has now won a Nobel prize.
Hmm. 🤔
This could lead to treatments and cures for prion diseases and Alzheimer’s.
Please let the professor know that research shows his motor and related health issues might benefit substantially from isolated nicotine supplementation.
Don't worry Professor, I'm sure yours and Neil's Nobel Prizes got held up in the post 😂😂😂
Nobel prize for physics isnt physics either…. Go figure.
Wait until an AI computer program gets a Nobel Prize.
Mark my words it will happen.
I am now telling the computer EXACTLY what it can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate!
Go Dawgs
Oh Lord, I pray upon my knees, that my organic syntheses, may no longer be inferior, to those conducted by bacteria. (J.Org.Chem., mid 60s).
A small leap for artificial intelligence, a huge step away from science.
This is horrific and will only lead to people understanding even less about medicine and science in general. Never forget that during the search for the blue LED, the dude became the world-leading expert on the machine he used because absolutely nobody else actually understood how it worked.
Protein tertiary structure forms due to the free radicals like OH- which may form bonds. An important example is the tire for vehicles. And the germination of a seed, radical and shoot.