Illustration of the US molecular biologist George P. Smith (born 1941). Smith is best known for the development of phage display, a laboratory technique that uses viruses that infect bacteria, known as bacteriophages or phages, to investigate and evolve proteins. The gene for the protein to be investigated is inserted into a gene that encodes a protein displayed on the phage's surface. The phage is introduced to a bacterial cell, where it multiplies producing many copies of the phage that will have copies of the protein attached to its surface. Interactions between the protein and other molecules and receptor and antibody binding sites can then be studied. Smith was a warded a share of the 2018 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his phage display work, along with Frances Arnold and Gregory Winter.