Google’s DeepMind researchers among recipients of Nobel prize for chemistry
The award honours protein design and the use of AI for protein-structure prediction
IT IS A recurring joke among chemists that the Nobel prize for chemistry is, more often than not, awarded for developments in biology. Recent examples include awards for the gene-editing tool CRISPR, in 2020; directed evolution of enzymes and antibodies, in 2018; and DNA repair mechanisms, in 2015. Some may view this year’s prize, which awarded work designing and predicting the structure of proteins, as a continuation of that trend. But the main message lies elsewhere: some of the best brains in chemistry do not only make molecules, they make computer models too.
AI researchers receive the Nobel prize for physics
The award, to Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield, stretches the definition of the field
A Nobel prize for the discovery of micro-RNA
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An adult fruit fly brain has been mapped—human brains could follow
For now, it is the most sophisticated connectome ever made