Science / The deciphering of the human genome stands, as expected, at the top of the list of important discoveries of the year 2000 compiled by the magazine "Science". In second place: a discovery by an Israeli researcher
By Yanai Ofran
There were years when the announcement of the "Science" magazine on the "Discovery of the Year" provoked prolonged polemics. Not that this choice has practical consequences or real importance, but similar to Time magazine's "Man of the Year", it gives an issue to answer and an opportunity for interested parties to emphasize how important a certain issue is (or addressed). But this time you didn't have to be a particularly great scientist to guess who the big winner would be: the human genome project, which aroused enormous interest even outside the scientific world, overshadowed all the other scientific events of the year 2000.
The genome is the list of operating instructions for every living cell, and it consists of a sequence of four types of molecules. Until not many years ago, deciphering even a small section of the genome was such a slow and tiring task that only particularly keen geneticists agreed to carry it out. But a combination of technical, scientific, technological, political and business circumstances made the year 2000 a turning point. A year ago there was only one multicellular organism (that is, an organism that is not a bacterium or a yeast), whose genome composition was known in its entirety to science; It was a worm, which is very popular with biologists and its name is C. elegans. The year 2000 rescued C-Elegance from its solitude. Today, the genomes of the fruit fly, the Arabidopsis plant, almost the entire genome of the mouse, the rat, several types of fish, and above all - the human genome are known to science.
The preoccupation with the scientific, medical, ethical, legal and business implications of deciphering the human genome has taken quite a bit of ink and paper to date, and it seems that the celebration is far from over. Almost every day, more companies are listed on stock exchanges around the world that plan to make a fortune from the genome, and at an equally dizzying pace, discussions and legal regulations are published that try to determine who, at least from a legal point of view, owns all this genetic information. This commotion left no room for doubt, that the genome is the scientific star of the past year.
The discoveries and breakthroughs that occupy the next nine places on the "Science" list are already less well known outside the scientific world. In second place is a discovery that is mainly attributed to an Israeli researcher. Prof. Ada Yonat from the Weizmann Institute heads one of the research groups that discovered the structure of the ribosome last year - the cell's factory for making proteins. The ribosome is a sophisticated device that reads the instructions for the production of proteins as they appear on RNA molecules, and produces proteins based on them. Only this year did Yonat, and other scientists who are breathing down our necks, manage to discover the structure of the ribosome and reveal some of the secrets of this device. The discovery is a kind of complement to the panic of the genome, because the ribosome is actually the reading device with which the cell reads the genes.
The following places are occupied by the following discoveries:
* The discovery of a fossilized skeleton in Georgia, in May of this year, which proved that the ancestors of Homo sapiens migrated from Africa more than 1.7 million years ago.
* A technological breakthrough that led to the production of complex electronic systems that are based on plastic rather than metal. These systems raise the hope that it will soon be possible to produce tiny and much cheaper electronic devices than today's metal and silicon devices.
* A series of discoveries related to stem cells also occupy an honorable place on the list. Stem cells are cells for which a final role has not yet been determined and which can turn into different types of cells. One of the discoveries made this year is that stem cells from the bone marrow can turn into liver cells under certain conditions. Such discoveries, the researchers hope, will change the world of transplants and medicine in general within a few years. Thanks to them, it will be possible to grow new organs instead of looking for a donor, or repair malfunctions in the brain or heart with the help of stem cells.
* A spacecraft orbiting Mars has discovered new evidence that water once existed on the surface of the planet.
* The universe is flat, cosmologists determined this year following some revolutionary observations, and finally decided the questions of what the structure of the universe is, and whether it will expand forever or will end up collapsing (for the worried - will expand forever).
* This year genes were discovered that allow the cell to respond quickly to external signals that are transmitted to it from a distance. These genes allow the cell to produce new substances it needs to adapt to new situations. This ability to react is critical in a large variety of diseases and pathological processes. Therefore, many believe that the new discoveries pave the way for a large variety of revolutionary drugs.
* A NASA spacecraft spent six months orbiting the asteroid Eros, eventually discovering the asteroid's exact chemical composition. This information can teach researchers a lot about asteroids and the origin of meteorites that fall to Earth.
* The strangeness of the quantum world, where one system can be in two different states at the same time, exists, it was believed until recently, only in the microscopic world. But a discovery published at the beginning of the summer demonstrated this strange behavior in the macroscopic world as well. The technological and theoretical implications of the discovery have not yet been fully clarified, but they ignite the imagination of physicists and computer scientists, who hope that with the help of this discovery, they will build computers that will pale in comparison to today's supercomputers.
{Appeared in Haaretz newspaper, 1/1/2001}
