Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2009

Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2009

The backside of the 88-inch cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.

Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2009


With so many incredible scientific advances and discoveries this year, Wired Science had a tough time choosing which 10 were the biggest. So, we went with the ones that stood out for us. From the amazing collective power of jellyfish, to a new human ancestor, to a cancer-detecting breathalyzer test, these stories made our list of kick-ass science in 2009.

No. 10 Element 114 Confirmed
In a cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a beam of calcium atoms slammed into a plutonium target, producing a pair of element 114 atoms for the second time in human history. Years earlier, a Russian team made similar claims, but their accomplishment remained in doubt.

It turns out that the Russians were right. But their results were somewhat disappointing. Each atom lasted for only tenths of a second. An older generation of scientists had hoped that humanity would someday find a way to make extremely heavy elements that last a long time. That search continues.


No. 9 Progress Toward a Vaccine for Dengue Fever

Several vaccines for dengue fever, a disease that strikes roughly 230 million people each year, showed promise in preliminary human trials. Larger scale tests began this year, and researchers should know just how effective they are by 2012.

The most promising experimental vaccine is made by combining a crippled yellow fever virus with proteins that are produced by each variety of dengue fever. In theory, those proteins can train the immune system to recognize and attack the deadly microbes. Four thousand children in Thailand will get the shot, which may offer protection from all four types of the virus.

Earlier this year, researchers prematurely announced the first successful test of an HIV vaccine. They claimed that two ineffective vaccines could offer a modicum of protection when combined. But their analysis was too optimistic. Other scientists were quick to tear down the findings.

Israel Institute of Technology

No. 8 Breathalyzer Detects Lung Cancer
Researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa built a sensor that can smell cancer. It uses gold nanoparticles to check for a telltale set of volatile organic chemicals that are emitted by malignant cells. The device could be used to give patients an early warning that they have the disease, which should increase their odds of survival.

Each sensor has nine sets of gold nanoparticles. When those sensing elements come in contact with a particular chemical, their electrical resistance changes in a predictable manner.

Other researchers have developed similar gadgets, but they do not perform well in high humidity, and human breath is pretty moist. Mass spectrometers can also detect the distinctive aroma of melanoma or lung cancer, but they are bulky and not very user friendly.


No. 7 Computer Program Predicts Drug Side Effects
If you have a rare disease, don't count on big drug companies to find a cure. Your best shot is to find out whether drugs that are already approved by the FDA for other purposes might work as a remedy for your illness.

This year, a team of researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of California, San Francisco developed a computer program to do that. Their software compares the shape of each drug to thousands of other drugs and natural chemicals, and uses that information to predict which biological buttons the drug can push. By looking at the constellation of proteins the drug affects, they can predict how it may affect the body.

The program could help big pharma too. Drug companies often spend millions of dollars testing the safety and effectiveness of a chemical, only to learn that it has unacceptable side effects or is useless. With this simulation technique, they could catch those problems sooner and avoid costly mistakes.


No. 6 Jellyfish Stir Oceans
Until recently, marine animals were thought to play but a small part in stirring Earth's waters. Scientists thought that hydrological friction would absorb the forces of flippers and fins, just as desk fans can't stir air in buildings across the street.

But geophysicists underestimated the power of induced fluid drift, or the tendency of liquid to stick to a body as it moves through water. In what is almost certainly the most poetic discovery of 2009, studies now suggest that jellyfish may stir the oceans with as much power as winds and tides.


No. 5 Bisphenol A in Plastics Harms Humans
For years, the plastic additive Bisphenol A was the center of a bitter environmental health battle. Researchers pointed to studies showing that its estrogen-mimicking qualities caused cancer and developmental damage in laboratory animals, and might do the same in people. Plastic manufacturers said animal tests were no substitute for human studies, which didn't exist. The U.S. public — of whom 90 percent have detectable levels of BPA in their bodies — was caught in the crossfire.

In November, epidemiologists produced a study of BPA in humans. In 164 male Chinese factory workers exposed to high levels of BPA, severe sexual dysfunction was rampant. Their exposures were far higher than most people, but it can no longer be argued that BPA affects only lab animals, not people.


No. 4 Life Extension Breakthrough (for Rodents)
In the first major pharmaceutical extension of lifespan in a mammal, scientists gave elderly mice Rapamycin, an immunosuppressant used to slow cell growth in cancer patients. After taking the drug, the rodents lived a mouse equivalent of 13 extra years. Even longtime longevity-enhancement skeptics were stunned by the results, which were duplicated independently in multiple laboratories on different mouse strains, showing that whatever was responsible for the results wasn't an accident.

There's no way of knowing whether Rapamycin could theoretically extend human lifespans. Because of the drug's severe side effects, it's unlikely that anyone will try it. But the drug will be used in lab animals to investigate as-yet-unknown cellular mechanisms of aging, raising hopes that the human lifespan will someday be lengthened.

National Human Genome Research Institute.

No. 3 Schizophrenia in the Genome
When the Human Genome Project was roughly completed in 1999, citizens and scientists alike expected that genetic explanations of complex diseases would soon follow. When this didn't happen, researchers predicted that genome-wide association studies, which compare the genomes of thousands of people at a time, would find the genetic clues.

In July, three separate teams of researchers returned the results of just such a study for schizophrenia, a disease that had defied other attempts at genetic analysis. The researchers analyzed more than 50,000 genomes in their search for clear disease patterns. They didn't find them. Instead they found approximately 10,000 genetic variants, each responsible for a miniscule percentage of disease risk. Some commentators likened the results to a genomic Pearl Harbor, or the Battle of Dunkirk.

But though the findings set back the notion that complicated diseases have simple genetic explanations, they were not a scientific setback. If anything, they were the opposite. Researchers are now embracing the complexity of disease, treating those genes — and others found in similarly baffling genomic studies — as threads leading them to as-yet-undiscovered biological networks and interactions.

After all, an answer in the form of a puzzle is still an answer.


No. 2 Ardi Usurps Lucy
Ever since a 3.2 million-year-old Australopithecus afarensis skeleton named Lucy was unearthed from an Ethiopian riverbed in 1974, humanity imagined that its first bipedal steps were taken on the savanna.

But in October, paleontologists unveiled Ardipithecus ramidus, or Ardi — an upright-walking primate who lived in Ethiopia a full million years before Lucy. But rather than dwelling in the savanna, Ardi evolved in light woodlands

Moreover, Ardi — the closest creature we have to the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees — looked far less chimplike than expected. It's not just Homo sapiens who've evolved, it's the other great apes too.

Whether Ardi falls directly on the evolutionary branch that produced humans, or belongs to an early offshoot, is still being argued. But there's no argument about Ardi's importance.

University of Washington

No. 1 Gene Therapy Makes a Comeback
This year, four teams of gene-therapy researchers had major victories in finding ways to safely treat human volunteers. Their success is all the sweeter after the years of tragedy and failure the field has suffered.

In 1999, 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger died after receiving an experimental treatment for a liver disorder that wouldn't have been fatal otherwise. His loss became a symbol of recklessness by genetics researchers. Several years later, five children developed leukemia after receiving a gene that was meant to boost their immune systems. To top it off, the first doctor to perform a gene-therapy procedure, French Anderson, is serving a lengthy prison sentence for child molestation.

Despite those setbacks, many scientists continued their work in the tumultuous area of research. Nanotech researchers concocted dozens of tiny particles that may be able to carry fragile DNA and RNA through the bloodstream and into the cells where they're needed. Biologists have refined a method for clipping disease-causing DNA sequences out of any genome with extreme precision. But the greatest success this year belongs to doctors who treated blindness, brain disorders, immune system deficiencies and a severe skin condition with an array of different gene-therapy techniques.

Two boys with X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy, a disease that ravages the brain, are doing well after French doctors gave them a gene that helps to maintain the delicate myelin coating on their nerve cells. A woman with Pachyonychia Congenita, a painful skin condition, watched one of her sores fade after doctors switched off the offending protein with a newer kind of gene therapy called RNA interference. Twelve patients who were blinded by Leber's congenital amaurosis showed signs of recovery after getting a genetic treatment in one of their eyes. Italian researchers announced that most of the 10 patients who received gene therapy for severe combined immunodeficiency, or "bubble boy disease," are doing very well eight years after the procedure that repaired their defenses against infection.

Also this year, researchers at the University of Washington cured two adult monkeys of colorblindness by giving them injections of a gene that produces pigments necessary for color vision. After the treatment, the animals scored higher on a computerized color blindness test.

In the coming years, gene therapy will be tested as a remedy for all sorts of inherited diseases, cancer, viral infections and even high cholesterol.

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