Science Magazine's Top Stories of 2007

ahab_2001 writes "The journal Science has put up its annual Breakthrough of the Year list. They're looking at the top-ten scientific accomplishments for 2007. Leading the list are studies of human genetic variation, and a flood of new discoveries that point toward a future of genomic medicine and even "personal genomics" — with all of the potential issues of ethics and privacy that entails. Runners-up include advances in cellular and structural biology, astrophysics, physics, immunology, synthetic chemistry, neuroscience, and computer science. In addition to the articles from the journal, there's a video on human genetic variation and a podcast as well." Some similarities here to Time magazine's list on the same subject.

Comments

They missed one

[LiquidCoooled]

Missing option: the aperture labs handheld portal device.

Sadly the funding didn't match the results

[WillAffleckUW]

Funding isn't even at the nominal rate of inflation (4 percent) - NIH/NIIT/NIA/etc is about 0.5 percent higher for 2008 than 2007. And with the cost of research materials being about 8 to 10 percent, this represents a substantial cut in US funding.

But, it's a great time to be working on medical genetics as a bioinformatician.

perennial runner-up for Breakthrough of the Year

[Paul Pierce]

Global Warming? Why? I don't see how this could compete with the others on the list. I didn't see any real breakthrough here (maybe I missed it), but I wouldn't count Al Gore's movie such.

The study of Global warming has been pretty steady over the past years. An Inconvenient Truth didn't make any new discoveries in the field that I know of. It looked more like a sob story to me, look more ice is melting, but don't you love nature like I do? Maybe we needed a movie to get people's attention, but it makes you feel like he is blaming YOU. If you are willing to dedicate your life to this noble cause, then don't take a private Jet to the showings.

Uhm No

[Bryansix]

James Thompson of the University of Wisconsin, who did the first research with embryonic stem cells, has now taken a major step toward ending the "ethical" controversy over their use. But hold on: That controversy was generated by specific objections from one religion, not some universal ethic. There is every reason to continue research along the old path, with embryo-derived cells: The new methods may carry unknown liabilities, so making the case for changing Bush's 2001 presidential order should continue.

Uhm, no. There is a much broader ethical response to the use of embryonic stem cells then you make it out to be.

House Democrats recently celebrated passage of a bill that would expand federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR). On the House floor, Speaker Pelosi (D-California) described research on embryonic stem cells as "a gift from God" and "biblical in its power to cure." Taking exception to the remark, Brownback says life -- not embryo-destructive research -- is "a gift from God." "You destroy life to get these embryonic stem cells," the presidential hopeful notes. "It's like she avoids that portion of the discussion; and on top of that, we've just had even another breakthrough where they've been able to reprogram skin cells to act like embryonic stem cells .... we don't have to destroy human life." The Kansas lawmaker says embryo-destructive research is not only unethical, but also unnecessary. "We don't need to do this research for the cures," he explains. "Indeed, were getting zero cures out of embryonic stem cells -- and were up to 73 human maladies being treated by adult stem cells. So if we're going on the science of this issue, the right route to go is more funding of adult stem cells."

and then we have this... http://kevinjjones.blogspot.com/2006/06/more-egg-donation-problems-for-escr.html

MercatorNet: Obtaining eggs from women volunteers is essential for Harvard?s experiments. Do you foresee any problems?

Sherley: Very knowledgeable human endocrinologists, bioethicists, and women's rights advocates have provided prescient warnings regarding the potential for exploitation of women in meeting the demand for egg donors that may be created by human embryo cloning research. There is already an active unregulated service economy based on provision of human eggs for IVF in the US. Currently, women receive significant financial compensation for undergoing an invasive procedure for harvest of their artificially hormonally-matured eggs. The US National Academy of Sciences has recommended that women who donate eggs for human embryo cloning experiments receive no compensation beyond the costs they incur for participation. This is the policy to which Harvard reports that its scientists will adhere.

Even Economics 101 is not required to realize that this is plan may potentially reduce the plight that cloning experiments pose for human embryos. Harvard scientists are likely to find that they cannot recruit sufficient women who will volunteer their eggs to make embryos that will be killed for cloning research, when instead they could receive as much as US$15,000 for eggs that will be used to conceive babies for infertile parents.

Re:technology, not science

[metalcup]

hmm..correct and incorrect, imho. Sure, there has been significant advances in the way sequencing works; the lastest being 454 sequencing http://www.454.com/, or Solexa http://www.illumina.com/pages.ilmn?ID=203 or SOLID http://www.illumina.com/pages.ilmn?ID=203, which has significantly reduced cost to sequencing. However, with each of these new techniques come new challenges in statistics and data analysis that are not just technological problems - they require significant, real breakthroughs in algorithms and statistical methods - how do you identify genes? what statistical methods would you use to identify distant repeats separated by millions of years? How accurate and reliable are these identification methods? We've come to a point where getting the data is now almost trivial and cheap - making sense of it, even being able to order it in the right way - we're just beginning to make headway there. So its not all tech - there is a lot of science there - only, it is difficult to argue it is biology any more - more chemistry and math and a bit of CS :)