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"The three scientists developed laboratory methods of controlling evolution and harnessing its power to engineer enzymes and bind proteins using same tools as nature, of genetic mutation and selection for the benefit of mankind. This is called ‘directed evolution’, a man-made procedure that compresses the evolution timescale by orders of magnitude down to a few years. The notion of ‘survival of the fittest’ in nature’s scheme of things is mimicked in the laboratory through directed evolution to create new useful entities."

"The three scientists used those same processes to solve problems facing humans. These include the promotion of a greener chemicals industry, the production of useful new materials, manufacturing sustainable biofuels as well as mitigating diseases and saving lives."

In 2018, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Frances H. Arnold, George P. Smith, and Gregory P. Winter for their pioneering work in developing laboratory methods for controlling evolution and harnessing its power to engineer enzymes and binding proteins for the benefit of mankind. Chemical engineer, Frances Arnold, at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, is the second woman to win the prize in the past 50 years. Sir Greg Winter is from MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the U.K. and George P. Smith is from the University of Missouri, U.S.A. They all used variants of existing chemistry studies to find solutions to problems such as creating biofuel from sugars, as well as altering human antibodies to fight things such as rheumatoid arthritis and cancer.

Arnold carried out his pioneering work in the 1990s on ‘directed evolution’ of enzymes. She devised a method for inducing mutations in enzyme-producing bacteria and then screening and selecting the bacteria to speed up and direct enzyme evolution. These enzymes which are proteins that catalyse chemical reactions are now used in applications from making biofuels to synthesising medical drugs.

After the Nobel Prize was announced, she told Nature, an international journal of science, “Biology has this one process that’s responsible for all this glorious complexity we see in nature.” Although nature operates blindly, scientists know what chemical properties they want to get from an enzyme and her techniques accelerate natural selection towards those goals.

The three scientists developed laboratory methods of controlling evolution and harnessing its power to engineer enzymes and bind proteins using same tools as nature, of genetic mutation and selection for the benefit of mankind. This is called ‘directed evolution’, a man-made procedure that compresses the evolution timescale by orders of magnitude down to a few years. The notion of ‘survival of the fittest’ in nature’s scheme of things is mimicked in the laboratory through directed evolution to create new useful entities.

Back in 1979, as a graduate in mechanical and aerospace engineering, Frances Arnold had a clear vision that her efforts to develop new technology must be for the benefit of humanity. However, with the future of the industry moving radically towards the new DNA technology at that time, she shifted to biology. “It was clear that a whole new way of making materials and chemicals that we needed in our daily lives would be enabled by the ability to rewrite the code of life”, she said in her Nobel Committee document. She turned her focus to using the tools of chemistry to engineer key enzymes of life. She thought if, learning from nature, she could design new enzymes with new properties, she could fundamentally change chemistry.

She told the interviewer from nobleprize.org that coming into biology from a different field; she was able to see things differently. “I was able to look at the problem with a totally fresh set of eyes”, she said. “A problem that had challenged people since the techniques of site-directed mutagenesis, for example which won the Nobel Prize was available. And I realised that the way that most people were going about protein engineering was doomed to failure”, she added.

Smith developed a new way to evolve proteins and Winter used the method for evolving antibodies with the aim of producing new drugs. These antibodies can neutralise toxins, counteract autoimmune diseases and cure metastatic cancer. The first drug based on this work is used against rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and inflammatory bowel disease.

Smith credited others for the work that led to his breakthrough. “Very few research breakthroughs are noble. Virtually all of them build on what went on before.” he said. He added, “Mine was an idea in a line of research that built very naturally on the lines of research that went before.”

The academy, in a statement, on awarding the prize said, “This year’s (2018) Nobel Laureates in chemistry have been inspired by the power of evolution and used the same principles of genetic change and selection to develop proteins that solve mankind’s chemical problems.”

Evolution has meant that the world is composed of a huge variety of different forms of life, because it has allowed organisms to respond to and deal with the chemical problems that surround them in their environment. The three scientists used those same processes to solve problems facing humans. These include the promotion of a greener chemicals industry, the production of useful new materials, manufacturing sustainable biofuels as well as mitigating diseases and saving lives.