David Baker brings made-from-scratch proteins to The Royal Society

His Croonian Prize Lecture moves generative AI beyond images, into protein switches, plant defences and new enzymes.

Channel: The Royal Society Story of November 10, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.

Advances in computational protein design | The Royal Society

"I'm always the token person doing something good with AI," David Baker jokes during his Royal Society lecture. His examples give that line substance: proteins designed not merely to take a particular shape, but to perform a particular job.

In "Advances in computational protein design | The Royal Society", Baker explains how diffusion methods, inspired by image-generation tools, can build protein structures from random noise. Rather than modifying proteins found in nature, his laboratory designs new ones from scratch, produces the genes encoding them and tests the results experimentally. Baker shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on computational protein design.

The intriguing step is from proteins that bind to something to proteins that respond to conditions. He presents switches intended to activate in the presence of particular signals, alongside a plant-defence system that triggers targeted cell death when it detects a pathogen. These are molecular designs with instructions attached.

At roughly 21,000 views, the lecture is the most watched of The Royal Society's five new uploads and its busiest video for daily viewing. AI also appears in the shorter "Is AI sentient? 🤖#ai #tech", drawn from the Michael Faraday Lecture 2025.

Across the channel, daily viewing is running below its usual level, though the subscriber total grew by about a thousand over the week. The programme itself remains broad: vaccine safety, Johan Håstad's account of complexity theory, and a fresh physics talk from Kymani Armstrong-Williams. That last upload, "This shouldn't be possible! | The Royal Society", connects the unresolved relationship between gravity and quantum mechanics to something as ordinary as jumping.

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More from The Royal SocietyThis week on the channel +115K views this weekAtomic clocks and movie science share The Royal Society's weekJames McGilligan explores precision timekeeping, while a cinema panel includes The X Files science advisor Anne Simon.Channel: The Royal Society · Story of October 11, 2026 A different discovery todayA video worth knowingJohn Oliver's case for removing Hegseth: "maximum lethality, not tepid legality"The 35-minute Last Week Tonight main story moves from kettlebell swings and a Kid Rock flyby to fired military lawyers, boat strikes and a school in Minab, and…Channel: LastWeekTonight · Story of November 10, 2026

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David Baker brings made-from-scratch proteins to The Royal Society The full story on Trari: https://trari.com/en/story/royalsociety-32448/

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The videos drawing views on The Royal Society right now

Is AI sentient? 🤖#ai #tech6,194 views · 2026-11-03 How safe are vaccines? #health #vaccine #science1,359 views · 2026-11-06 This shouldn't be possible! | The Royal Society884 views · 2026-11-09 Highlights from 40 years of complexity theory | The Royal Society0 views · 2026-11-05

The numbers

Here is how The Royal Society's uploads and audience moved over the week.

subscribers

257,000

▲ 1,000 in the last 7 days

total views

28,498,334

views per day

6,620

typical day: 16,687

first-day views of each video posted this week

Advances in computational protein desig…

6,960

Is AI sentient? 🤖#ai #tech

4,005

As of November 10, 2026 · Data source: Trari Social News, Trari Traffic Trends and Ranking Platform, Google YouTube

Subscriber, view, like and comment counts are YouTube's. Rates, usual days, rankings, comparisons and categories are Trari's own calculations.