Nobel Prize Chemistry 2018.

Nobel Prize Chemistry 2018.

This year’s coveted Nobel Prize for Chemistry (2018) - that carries a prize money of ₹ 7.4 Crores - has been awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy for Sciences, to three distinguished scientists - Frances Arnold, who shares half the prize money and the other half will be shared by George Smith and Gregory Winter - for their “research using directed evolution to produce enzymes and antibodies for producing new chemicals and pharmaceuticals”.

Enzymes are one of the most fascinating chemical proteins, which most of us have studied as biological catalysts during school days. The Nobel laureates in Chemistry, have used their enzyme knowledge to successfully bio-mimic evolution in ultra-fast forward mode to engineer enzymes that are beneficial to humankind.

Life on our unique planet Earth - the only known celestial body in the unending, infinitesimally vast cosmos, that harbours life - has been evolving ever since it came into existence some 3.7 billion years ago. Nature has used the power of evolution to create a vast diversity of life on Earth and in the process molecules with divergent chemical capabilities have also evolved. Darwin’s findings “On the origin of species by natural selection”, that was published as an outcome of his Beagle voyage to the Galápagos Islands, has revealed the process of evolution of life and its adaptation. This evolutionary process on Earth, which is loosely referred to as “Survival of the fittest”, takes a long process and is the best known source for adaptation.

Dr Arnold, a biochemical engineer at Caltech, has harnessed the “survival of fittest” adaptation power of evolution and has used the principles of Darwin’s evolution in the test tube to speed up the process of enzyme production to create never-before-seen chemical reactions in a process called “directed evolution”. Dr Smith, of the University of Missouri in Columbia and Dr Winter, of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, have used Dr Arnold’s findings of “directed evolution” to produce new chemicals and pharmaceuticals for the benefit of human society. This process has opened up new vistas in fields from materials science to immunotherapy. Directed evolution will enable scientists to use nature's prowess in searching through trillions of different molecules to try and find solutions to problems, which humans could never have imagined.

Arnold - only the fifth female Nobel laureate in Chemistry - who has survived breast cancer and is also a single mother to three sons, started conducting her first “directed evolution” experiments at Caltech in 1993. Her works began in a fit of desperation since she was pretty “clueless and did not know how to make proteins”. She began tinkering with proteins - using her mechanical engineering training - and started doing lots of experiments simultaneously and in the process realised “that's exactly what nature does”. Many considered her approach to be lunatic but she remained undeterred. She was certain that her way of addressing the protein engineering problem - with a completely different perspective, which was akin to what nature does always - was the only way forward. Her conviction and self-belief in what she was doing was right, notwithstanding the adverse comments and criticism that she constantly subjected to, led her to the path breaking discovery of “directed evolution”.

Arnold created random mutations - by shuffling genes artificially by figuring out which elements have a fighting chance of producing proteins that actually work and maybe even do something useful - to produce desired enzymes. She then slipped these mutated genes into bacteria, which helped in pumping out thousands of different variants of the enzyme. Sifting through these enzymes, she identified variants that were useful for the chosen task. She used these new variants to produce a new round of mutations in this variant. The result was a new enzyme, which worked better than its predecessor. This is exactly what happens in nature, which produces the best variant that is capable for adaptation, albeit over hundreds of thousands of years. Dr Arnold’s experiments have fundamentally changed the way scientists think about working with enzymes. She says “By doing what nature does, you can get the job done much more quickly.”

George Smith, developed an “elegant method” known as phage display, where a bacteriophage - a virus that infects bacteria - can be used to evolve new proteins. His technique of phage display is now used in producing antibodies that can neutralise toxins, counteract autoimmune diseases and cure metastatic cancer. Smith, according to his colleagues, is one of the most genius scientists whose humility is par excellence. He showed a glimpse of his exemplary humility, modesty and generosity by thanking the university and his co-winners for “winning him the Nobel prize”. Addressing the press on his winning the Nobel, Smith said “There have been enormous numbers of people in this web of science, and I happen to be somewhere in the middle of that, and that’s why I’m getting this prize,” further exhibiting his extraordinary humility.

Party loving Cambridge Professor, Sir Gregory Winter, on being informed of his Nobel award ordered Champagne, worth ₹2.5 Lacs, for his lab colleagues. Sir Winter adopted Dr Arnold’s “directed evolution” approach and Dr Smiths phage display technique to create useful antibodies and proteins, which could target and grab onto disease-related targets. His findings have been used to produce the first pharmaceutical medicine - AbbVie's adalimumab- that was approved for sale in 2002.

Pharmaceuticals for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and inflammatory bowel diseases have resulted from the research of this year’s Nobel laureates in Chemistry. Their research has further helped in developing anti-bodies that can neutralise toxins, counteract autoimmune diseases and cure metastatic cancer, rightfully earning the trio their coveted Nobel Prize.