Science stories that made the headlines in 2020

Science stories that made the headlines in 2020

The Coronavirus pandemic and research

Aside from research on SARS-CoV-2 itself, the pandemic had huge effects on the scientific community. Tragically, the virus claimed the lives of a number of researchers as well.

While a considerable proportion of researchers found themselves struggling to do their work at times this year, others found themselves laid off or furloughed. Women in STEM appear to have taken the greatest hit to their productivity. Academic job opportunities shrunk and don’t seem to have recovered to the hiring levels of past years.

Nevertheless, a survey of scientists has found the community resilient in the face of lockdowns and other restrictions, and the astounding accomplishments in the development of drugs, vaccines, diagnostics, and research techniques related to the coronavirus are a testament to researchers’ creativity and dedication.

Scientists managed to keep their science afloat by turning their homes into wet labs and finding new ways to be productive. Scientific conferences went from cancelled or postponed to completely revamped as virtual events, with broadened inclusivity and fewer carbon emissions from travel.

Global forest fires

With all eyes on the pandemic, it was easy to overlook other big events unleashed by mother nature. Wildfires burned up and down the US West Coast. In California, blazes damaged field sites and threatened astronomical observatories. And on the other side of the globe, in Australia, efforts to shore up vulnerable koala populations suffered, perhaps irreparably.

Similarly, a park in Argentina where a long-term study of 20 groups of resident howler monkeys had been ongoing for decades saw at least five groups perish in fires this fall.

The fires were thought to have been started intentionally by ranchers to stimulate grassland growth, but they then burned out of control, decimating the reserve where the monkeys lived.

Discovery of Mitochondria in blood circulation

In February, scientists reported that they had found functioning mitochondria in people’s blood. Past studies had shown that mitochondrial DNA could be found in circulation, and at times the organelles might get released from cells in response to damage, but entire, respiring organelles in the blood of healthy individuals was a novel observation.

The next step is to figure out what the organelles are doing in circulation.

Additional human salivary glands

Humans continue to be full of anatomical surprises, and this year researchers added to our known components a set of salivary glands in the neck that they named the tubarial glands.

The tissue, tucked behind the pharynx, likely went unnoticed because it is difficult to reach during surgery and was discovered with a combination of positron emission tomography (PET) and computed tomography (CT) that uses a radioactive tracer that binds to a prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA).

Ordinarily, PSMA PET/CT is used to detect prostate cancer, but lead scientist Wouter Vogel, a radiation oncologist at the Netherlands Cancer Institute told, “This scan is extremely sensitive for the salivary glands. So we can see more than ever before.”

Alzheimer’s blood test

The first blood test to sample for blood biomarkers indicative of Alzheimer’s disease became available for physicians in October. C2N Diagnostics’s test measures the ratio of two isoforms of the amyloid-β protein, Aβ42 and Aβ40, and the presence of isoforms of apolipoprotein E (ApoE) associated with Alzheimer’s risk.

“If you asked me [five or ten] years ago if there would ever be a blood test for Alzheimer’s, I would have been very skeptical,” said Howard Fillit, the executive director and chief science officer of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, which invested in C2N’s development of the test.

Neanderthal DNA in Africans

Because modern humans’ interbreeding with Neanderthals took place in Eurasia thousands of years ago, geneticists had assumed that individuals with African ancestry wouldn’t have much Neanderthal DNA in their genomes. Not so. In a study that came out in January, researchers compared African genomes to the Neanderthal reference genome and found a lot more overlap than they had expected—about 17 megabases.

This is still just one-third of what’s found in the genomes of people with European and Asian ancestry, and likely represents the migration of people from Europe and Asia who carried with them to Africa the genetic legacy of their ancestors’ intermingling with Neanderthals.