Spring Research Round-Up

Photography by Pietro Sambuy

From space probes to stress, our science writers give a run-down of exciting research from this season.

PHYSICS

What excites me in science right now is the exploration of Jupiter by NASA’s space probe, Juno. In a highly-elliptical polar orbit between 4200km and 8100000km away from the planet, Juno has sent back breathtaking photos of Jupiter, my favourite being those of Jupiter’s South pole. It is surprising what odd, otherworldly beauty can be produced by the hard, cold laws of physics in the form of immense, swirling storms, resplendent with bands of striking colour produced by the different components of Jupiter’s atmosphere. Juno is also helping to answer fundamental questions about the beginning of the Solar system.

Derek Sim

INFECTION

According to the World Health Organisation, in 2017 alone there were 219 million cases of malaria and 435,000 deaths. This is why a promising report, published in Nature, on human trials of a new malaria vaccine is so exciting. 32 volunteers in a double blind placebo trial were given isolates of Plasmodium falciparum surface protein 1. It was found that those who had the vaccine had high levels of malaria specific IgG and IgM antibodies in their blood for 6 months after the injection, which is comparable to semi-immune individuals. Although this is still in the early stages, it is an exciting new route to explore in response to malaria.

Abigail Spreadbury

GENETICS

Last October, the development of the ground-breaking prime genome editing technique raised enthusiasm both within and outside the scientific community for its promising results and potential applications to treat disease. Building on the conventional CRISPR-Cas9 system, David Liu and colleagues at the Broad Institute demonstrated reduced off-target effects and increased precision in correcting disease-causing mutations using this new method, including for Tay-Sachs disease. Even though many questions remain elusive, these are undoubtedly exciting times for genome editing!

Maria Carreira

CHEMISTRY

Chemical bond formation and dissociation was filmed at the atomic scale for the first time by scientists at the University of Nottingham and the University of Ulm. They used transmission electron microscopy to observe dirhenium molecules in a graphitic nano-test tube. Metal-metal bond character is of great importance for catalysis, and this research took our understanding a step further, revealing a new bonding state in this molecule before the bond breaking. The team hopes that directly following  chemical reactions via transmission electron microscopy will become as common and powerful a technique for studying them as currently used spectroscopic methods.

Kristina Kostadinova

Photography by Pietro Sambuy

ENVIRONMENT

In February 2020, a collaboration between electrical engineer Jun Yao and microbiologist Derek Lovley at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, produced a device capable of power generation from the humidity in air. Made from conductive protein nanowires, harvested from G. sulfurreducens, contacted with electrodes and exposed to humid air, each device produces a sustained 0.5V. The current and voltage generated can be scaled up by linking these to one another. Unlike other means of generating power renewably, this method does not depend on specific environmental conditions, and so has broad potential applications and is capable of continuous energy harvesting.

Emily Hufton

TECHNOLOGY

February 2020 saw the first successes of a novel approach to antibiotic development. Machine learning was used by a team of researchers at MIT to screen a pool of millions of molecules for antibiotic properties. Halicin, a powerful antibiotic which combats a wide range of previously untreatable bacteria, is the first to be discovered using AI. This is particularly significant as, despite the rising concern of antibiotic resistance claiming more lives each year, development and approval of new antibiotics has slowed in recent years. There are even hopes that this approach could be extended to the discovery of other drugs in future, such as those combatting neurodegeneration and cancer.

Emily Hufton

PSYCHOLOGY

Every university student reading this right now can relate to the concept of stress: the overwhelming feeling of having too many essays, too many exams and too little money to cope. But what if stress could be cured? We know there’s a link between the immune system, inflammation and depression, but what if anti-inflammatory drugs could cure stress and PTSD? In 2016, Rebecca Brachman at Columbia University in New York found that treating mice with ketamine cured symptoms of stress in those suffering from PTSD. Research is now being carried out into developing a vaccination which harnesses the principle of this to combat stress and PTSD. Would being vaccinated against stress make us all happier - or would we be unproductive and lazy? Wait a few years and maybe we will see.

Elisha Malik