No.10 gene therapy was successful
Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a type of motor neuron degeneration caused by the anterior spinal cord muscle weakness, muscle atrophy disease, which is autosomal recessive disease, clinical is not uncommon, there is no specific effective treatment If left untreated, sick babies will die about 2 years of age.
This year, researchers report that they saved the life of a baby with type I Spinal Muscular Atrophy by adding a missing gene to spinal neurons, while at the same time breaking through the blood-brain barrier to the central nervous system , Which has groundbreaking and landmark significance for gene therapy for the treatment of other degenerative neurological diseases.
No. 9 2.7 million years ago the Earth's atmosphere
In August of this year, a team led by researchers at Princeton University and the University of Maine announced that they had found a frozen Antarctic ice core 2.7 million years earlier, more than 1.7 million years earlier than its oldest ice core.
In these ice cores, there are also bubbles, which are gases from the Earth's atmosphere 2.7 million years ago - when the ice age was just beginning - and analysis showed that the atmosphere was below 300 ppm of carbon dioxide at that time, Much lower than today's 400 ppm, which is inconsistent with the results of some previous indirect measurements and remains to be further studied by scientists.
No. 8 A new species of orangutan
In November of this year, scientists discovered a new species of orangutan, Pongo tapanuliensis, on Sumatra Island in Indonesia, which is the first discovery of a new species of human primates after nearly 90 years.
No. 7 will be 'a net of cancer cells'
People have been looking for such a cancer treatment drugs: it is not for a specific cancer pathogenesis of organs, but based on cancer cells DNA, non-discriminatory treatment.In May this year, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA ) Approved a drug called pembrolizumab that had previously been approved for the treatment of melanoma and a few other tumors and which has now been able to treat any late-stage entity that contains mismatch repair defects in children and adults Tumor.
This approval by the FDA is significant for the field of cancer treatment. In fact, it is more common for tumors to appear simultaneously in different organs than for tumors in the same organ. Previously, the treatment of cancer was confined to the pathogenesis Wherever cancer occurs, and wherever it is now treated, and now pembrolizumab, either in the pancreas, colon, thyroid, or in any of a dozen other tissues, is able to latch on to mutations that contain mismatch repair Defective cancer cells, and treatment.
No. 6 Biology preprint comes out
This year, a preprinted version of biology began to emerge, and thousands of biologists published their uncensored academic paper on the preprint website.4 years ago, the bioRxiv, a free biomedical preprint server, was released at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, At the beginning of this year, some agencies and organizations in the United States and the United Kingdom issued a policy of encouraging pre-press sharing, which greatly accelerated the development of biology preprint.
No. 5 Precise gene editing
More than 60,000 genetic aberrations are linked to human disease, of which nearly 35,000 are due to the slightest mistake: a DNA mutation occurs at only one specific site. This year, the researchers announced a new "base-editing" Technology that can correct this mutation in DNA and RNA, and in the future this technology may find wide application in the medical field.
No. 4 30 million years ago Homo sapiens fossils
Homo sapiens is a species of human beings in the taxonomic category that is currently shared by all human beings. It has been impossible for academics to determine the exact location and time of Homo sapiens. For a long time now, The oldest fossil for Homo sapiens comes from East Africa, about 200,000 years old, and many believe that humans originated in East Africa.
This year, researchers found in Morocco the remains of early human fossils dating back from about 30 to 35 million years ago, the earliest Homo sapiens fossils discovered so far.
No. 3 portable neutrino detector
In 1974, the theoretic physicist Daniel Freedman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology put forward neutrinos-nuclear coherence elastic scattering theory, that neutrinos and other particles have the same wave-particle duality, and its wavelength will be with Changes in the energy of the particles. When in a high-energy state, the neutrinos interact with only one proton or neutron; while in a low-energy state, the neutrinos will interact with the entire nucleus that contains all protons and neutrons Coherency occurs where neutrinos bounce back from the nucleus, sending out a detectable signal.
This year, for the first time, researchers captured a signal of coherent scattering between neutrinos and nuclei using a portable detector weighing just as much as a microwave oven, a finding that was experimentally validated by physicists more than 40 years ago Theory, has accomplished those unmanaged targets of large-scale exploration devices over the years.
No. 2 Atomic Life Science Research
In the history of science, cryo-EM is a very rare technological innovation - on the one hand, he has won the Nobel Prize for the highest award in the scientific community; on the other hand, the technology itself is still in a phase of rapid development and its impact Force is also continuing to grow rapidly.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 2017 awarded Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for their work in developing three-dimensional Imaging of cryo-electron microscopy.
No.1 Double Neutron Star Combined with Gravity Wave Detection
Beijing time at 22:00 on October 16, LIGO (laser interferometer gravitational wave Observatory), VIRGO (Virgo gravity wave detector) jointly dozens of astronomy agencies around the world held a press conference jointly announced on August 17 this year to capture by the two The gravitational wave signal (GW170817), produced by a combination of 1.1 and 1.6 solar-mass neutron stars, respectively, is located at a distance of about 40 Mbps from us.
This gravitational wave detection event was correlated with GRB 170817A, which confirmed for the first time the interrelationship between neutron star-neutron star recombination and short gamma-ray storm, and the subsequent correspondence observation and electromagnetic spectrum observation of electromagnetic wave further confirmed that Is a neutron star collision event.The exploration event is the fifth time that mankind has detected the gravitational wave signal from the universe and also marks the beginning of multi-disciplinary astronomy.