1. The first humans born with heritable edits to their DNA (2018)
The Crispr-Cas9 system was discovered in the 2010’s, this is a genetic engineering technique that enables geneticists and medical researchers to edit parts of the genome by adding or removing or altering sections of the DNA sequence. It is based on the naturally occurring system that bacteria use as an immune defence. Cas9 is the enzyme used to open up specific strands of DNA that are complementary to the CRISPR sequence. In 2012, researchers proposed that Crispr-Cas9 could be used as a powerful editing tool. In 2018 the birth of two girls whose genome had been edited with Cispr was announced by Chinese researcher He Jiankui. This wasn’t received well by the global medical community due to the staggering ethical quandaries such as potential use of this technique for genetic enhancement and when the “personhood” of the embryo is decided.
Chinese scientists use CRISPR in first gene-edited babies | Science News
What is CRISPR-Cas9 and how does it work? | INTEGRA (integra-biosciences.com)
2. Discovery of Habitable Exoplanets
The first few exoplanets – a planet orbiting a star other than the Sun – were discovered back in the 1990s, but things didn’t really pick up until the Kepler Space Telescope launched in 2009. This observatory was designed to watch 150,000 stars simultaneously, monitoring how often their light dimmed. If a regular pattern was seen, it suggested a planet was passing between the star and Earth. Using this technique (known as the transition method), Kepler discovered over 2,600 exoplanets during its nine-year run. With help from other projects like HARPS, WASP, and TESS, that number has now grown to around 4,100.
One of the biggest hauls came in 2017, with the discovery of seven rocky, roughly Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting TRAPPIST-1. Three of these orbit within the habitable zone of the cool red dwarf star, and follow-up studies have shown there could be significant amounts of water present, making them some of the best contenders for habitable planets outside our solar system.
Earth-Size, Habitable Zone Planet Found Hidden in Early NASA Kepler Data | NASA
3. Discovery Higgs Boson Particle
The Higgs boson is the fundamental force-carrying particle of the Higgs field, which is responsible for granting other particles their mass. It is an elementary particle in the standard model of particle physics, with zero spin, no electric charge, and no colour charge. It is very short lived and decays rapidly into other particles making it hard to detect. A boson is a "force carrier" particle that comes into play when particles interact with each other, with a boson exchanged during this interaction. For example, when two electrons interact they exchange a photon — the force-carrying particle of electromagnetic fields.
The Higgs Boson particle was discovered almost 50 years after it was first proposed, this discovery was a huge breakthrough in particle physics because measuring the properties of the Higgs boson in detail is crucial to exploring many outstanding mysteries in particle physics and cosmology, from the wild variation of masses of elementary particles to the fate of the universe.
What’s next for Higgs boson research? | CERN (home.cern)
How did we discover the Higgs boson? | CERN (home.cern)
4. The rise of AI
In the past decade AI has had many advancements and is continuing to improve and become more widely used and recognised. Sophia the robot, the world’s first non-human to be recognised with legal personhood, was activated in February 2016 Sophia, a humanoid robot developed by Hanson Robotics, is said to combine cutting edge technology in robotics and AI in a way that “personifies our dreams for the future of AI.” Sophia combines vision algorithms, that process visual inputs from its camera eyes, with speech algorithms that employ natural language processing to process and produce speech, to create a human-like impression. The ancient boardgame Go was developed in China 3000 years ago, and is so ridiculously complex that the amount of possible moves is a googol greater than in chess. For reference: a googol is a number greater than there are atoms in the universe. Developing computer programs that can beat humans at logical games, a benchmark for increasingly capable algorithms, had been a goal for AI researchers since a computer first mastered noughts and crosses in 1952. But in 2016, DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat the human world champion at Go for the first time. The first Generative Pre-trained Transformer was released by OpenAI in 2018. Employing a Transformer architecture, the large language model GPT-1 was able to answer questions and generate blocks of text. It gained these abilities after being trained using two large datasets: one with around 8 million web pages, and one with over 11,000 books. Although this language processor was fluent and accurate on an unprecedented scale, it was unable to coherently generate longer blocks of text and was prone to repetition. OpenAI introduced ChatGPT to the public in 2022, launching a free preview of GPT-3.5. Just one week after its release, the chatbot interface had surpassed one million users - soon becoming the fastest-growing consumer application in history. The newest GPT to date was launched in March 2023. Although GPT-4 retained many of its predecessors’ flaws, it had some key advancements – such as the abilities to take in videos and images, rather than just text, as input prompts, as well as to access the internet in real time.
10 AI milestones of the last 10 years | Royal Institution (rigb.org)
5. HIV Prevention Treatment
In 2012, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a medication, called Truvada. It was a large study released in 2011 that set the stage for this sea change in HIV prevention. That study, which the journal Science dubbed the "breakthrough of the year," was the first since 1994 to show a new way to prevent HIV transmission from one person to another. (In 1994, researchers reported that they'd found a pharmaceutical option to help prevent the transmission of HIV from a pregnant woman to her fetus.) The study began in 2005, and the 2011 findings were interim results. The researchers found a 96% reduction in HIV transmission in that data. The final data encompassing the entire 10-year study, reported in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2016, showed a 93% reduction in HIV transmission. Truvada was first authorised in the EU in 2005 in combination with at least one other antiviral medicine to treat adults infected with HIV-1. Truvada contains two active substances, emtricitabine and tenofovir disoproxil, which is a 'prodrug' of tenofovir. This means that it is converted into tenofovir in the body. Emtricitabine and tenofovir work in similar ways by blocking the activity of viral reverse transcriptase, which is necessary for the virus to multiply.
6. Antibody–Drug Conjugates for Cancer Therapy
Antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) consist of a tumour targeting monoclonal antibody (mAb) bound to a cytotoxic drug via a chemical linker. MAbs work by recognising and binding with specific proteins on cancer cells and this field was advanced since 1975, however treatment with mAbs alone is often insufficient. Cytotoxic agents based chemotherapy has been the main approach for the treatment of a wide range of cancers for decades, however these often show low therapeutic index and side effects are generally attributed to non-specific binding. The use of ADCs combines the advantages of specific targeting ability and potent killing effect while minimising effects to normal cells. The first ADC, Mylotarg®, was approved in 2000 by the FDA and 14 ADCs have since received approval, with over 100 ADC candidates investigated in clinical stages.
Antibody–Drug Conjugates for Cancer Therapy | NCBI
Antibody drug conjugate: the “biological missile” for targeted cancer therapy | Nature
7. Restoring Reefs
Coral bleaching and degradation is a rapidly increasing problem caused largely by rising ocean temperatures. Coral bleaching is when its symbiotic relationship with the algae zooxanthellae is broken down by external stresses. The Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have established the ‘Coral Program’ in which they have created a matrix of aquariums to subject different types of coral to different environments, allowing them to understand how they might survive and help them in doing so.
8. Nasa’s Perseverance Rover on Mars
NASA’s Perseverance rover, part of the Mars 2020 mission, landed in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021. It completed its primary objectives which were to search for signs of ancient microbial life, collect and cache Martian soil and rock samples, and study the planet's geology and climate. It is also testing technologies critical for future human exploration, such as the MOXIE experiment, which produces oxygen from Martian CO2. Additionally, Perseverance carried the Ingenuity helicopter, which has performed successful test flights, demonstrating powered flight on another planet. The mission aims to return the collected samples to Earth through a future mission, providing insights into Mars' habitability and paving the way for human missions.
Perseverance: Nasa's Mars rover celebrates 1,000 days of science | BBC
9. mRNA Based Vaccines
In December 2020, the first messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine, targeting the spike protein of the SARS-CoV2 coronavirus, was approved by the FDA and EMA for public use. mRNA vaccines use messenger RNA to instruct cells to produce a protein that triggers an immune response. Recent advances include improved mRNA stability and delivery systems, enhancing the vaccine efficacy and production speed. These vaccines can be rapidly designed and manufactured, allowing quick responses to emerging pathogens. mRNA technology also shows promise beyond infectious diseases, including treatments for cancer and other conditions. Advantages of mRNA vaccines include high efficacy, safety, and flexibility in targeting various diseases. They do not require live virus cultures, which the risk of contamination and enables faster scaling. Additionally, mRNA vaccines can be updated quickly to target new variants.
A Comprehensive Review of mRNA Vaccines | NCBI
10. Carbon Capture and Storage
Carbon capture, which originated in the 1970s for enhanced oil recovery, involves trapping carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from industrial sources and storing them underground to mitigate climate change. Recent advances include more efficient capture technologies, such as solvent-based systems, solid sorbents, and direct air capture, which extracts CO₂ directly from the atmosphere. Innovations in storage methods, like mineralization and utilization in building materials, have also progressed. The advantages of carbon capture include reducing greenhouse gas emissions, supporting the transition to renewable energy by decarbonizing hard-to-abate industries, and potentially creating a circular carbon economy. By capturing CO₂ from the air and industrial processes, these technologies play a crucial role in achieving net-zero emissions targets and combating global warming.
Recent advances in carbon capture storage and utilisation technologies: a review | Springer
