David Baker, who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for computational protein design, is leading a new initiative called AI BioDesign, backed by the Allen Institute, University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. The project pairs AI models with large-scale lab experiments to design molecules and biological functions that don't exist in nature but are chemically feasible, aiming to build public databases and tools for future medicines and technologies.
wired.com
· 2026-09-18
Israeli structural biologist Ada Yonath, who won a share of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for revealing the ribosome's structure through X-ray crystallography, has died at age 87. She was the first scientist to grow crystals suitable for mapping this cellular protein-making machinery, and her later work on antibiotic-ribosome interactions illuminated drug resistance mechanisms.
nature.com
· 2026-09-04
At a Zurich ceremony on September 3, researchers received Ig Nobel awards for offbeat but rigorous studies, including a biomechanics team that produced a cross-species definition of kissing excluding food-sharing behavior, a physics group that engineered urinal designs to minimize splashback, and soil scientists who buried and later exhumed 1,000 pairs of underwear to study decomposition rates linked to land use.
nature.com
· 2026-09-03
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