A Nobel Prize for evolution

Abstract

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Chemistry recognizes the harnessing of evolution for the benefit of humanity, research that led to significant advances in medicine and technology. Half of the award goes to Frances H. Arnold “for the directed evolution of enzymes.” Sir Gregory P. Winter and George P. Smith each received a quarter share “for the phage display of peptides and antibodies.”1 Arnold pioneered the method of directed evolution, which has revolutionized the search for proteins and other biological molecules with new properties or activities. Smith demonstrated the exposure (or “display”) of a biologically active peptide on the surface of a bacteriophage that contained the encoding gene, enabling the linking of genotype to phenotype on a vast scale. Winter pushed this method a critical step further, showing that folded and functional proteins could be similarly displayed on phage, and then engineered by mutation and selection. The phage display method allowed directed evolution of antibodies that bind with high affinity to new molecules, leading to the present-day use of therapeutic antibodies in effective treatment of multiple diseases, including arthritis and metastatic cancer. Most descriptions surrounding this “Nobel Prize for evolution” have focused on the present-day applied benefits derived from directing evolutionary processes toward humanity’s ends. Delightfully, that is not the whole story: we have also learned much about natural evolution through the attempts to direct it. From the scientific background document by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (with citations removed):