The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists who used directed evolution to engineer cancer drugs and biofuels

• The Nobel Prize in chemistry went to three scientists who used directed evolution to make new proteins that are in biofuels and cancer drugs.
• The winners include Americans Frances Arnold and George Smith, as well as Sir Gregory Winter from the UK.
• Arnold is the fifth woman to win a chemistry Nobel since 1901.

Two Americans and a Briton won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday for harnessing the power of evolution to produce novel proteins used in everything from environmentally-friendly detergents and biofuels to cancer drugs. 

Scientists Frances Arnold, George Smith, and Sir Gregory Winter are sharing the prize for their research using directed evolution to produce enzymes for new chemicals and pharmaceuticals. The fruits of this work include the world's top-selling prescription medicine -- the antibody injection Humira sold by AbbVie for treating rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.

"This year's Nobel Laureates in Chemistry have been inspired by the power of evolution and used the same principles – genetic change and selection – to develop proteins that solve mankind's chemical problems," the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a statement on awarding the 9 million Swedish crown ($1 million) prize.

Arnold, an American chemical engineer and biochemist at Caltech, will receive half of the $1 million, while Smith from the University of Missouri and Sir Gregory Winter from Cambridge will share the other half. 

Arnold is the fifth woman to win the prize, which has been awarded to 181 people since 1901. 

"I’m bouncing off the walls, but I’m trying to pretend to sound calm and collected," she told NobelPrize.org when reached by phone early Wednesday. 

Arnold said her background as a mechanical engineer gave her the ability to tackle protein engineering in a totally different way from what others were trying.

"The way most people were going about protein engineering was doomed to failure," she said.

Instead, she tried a more "obvious" route: copying "nature's design process," that is, evolution.

"All this tremendous beauty and complexity of the biological world all comes about through this one simple, beautiful design algorithm," she said. "And what I do is use that algorithm to build new biological things."

The Nobel committee is set to award this year's peace prize on Friday. 

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