Trio of Scientists wins for work on new proteins
Three scientists from the US and the UK were jointly awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for taking control of evolution and using the principles of genetic change and selection to develop new proteins used in drugs and medical treatments.
“They have applied the principles of Darwin in test tubes. They have used the molecular understanding we have of the evolutionary process and recreated the process in their labs. They have been able to make evolution many thousands of times faster and redirect it to create new proteins,” said Claes Gustafsson, head of the Royal Swedish Academy’s Nobel committee for chemistry.
American scientist Frances H Arnold, 62, became the fifth woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering directed evolution of enzymes to speed up the creation of multiple variants.
She received half the award and the other half was shared by American researcher George P Smith and British researcher Gregory P Winter. The announcement came a day after Donna Strickland became the third woman to win the Nobel Prize for Physics after a gap of 55 years.
Directed evolution consists of subjecting a gene to repetitive rounds of mutagenesis or introducing variations, selecting the desired variation and then amplifying it. Arnold’s work on directed evolution of enzymes has wide uses in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries and is the basis for creating biofuels.
In 1985, Smith used a novel method called phage display that uses a bacteriophage – a virus that infects bacteria – to develop new proteins. This was used by Winter for directed evolution of antibodies to produce new pharmaceuticals.