As the COVID-19 pandemic moves into a third year that continues to be troubling and bleak for us, it is not surprising that the biomedical community has continued to focus on diagnosing and treating the disease.
In the main innovations this year we see reflected this concern on the part of the scientific community about these scientific discoveries that can help researchers to better understand the biological realities of SARS-CoV-2 infections, questioning neighboring cells to those infected with the virus, for example.
Thus, among other scientific advances highlighted in 2021 by the prestigious journal Science, we will find the ability to predict the three-dimensional structure of proteins using artificial intelligence, new drugs against covid-19 disease, in vivo applications of CRISPR or even the extraction of Ancient human DNA in sediments. We review them.
The international academic journal annually awards the award for the greatest find of the year in all fields, from physics to astronomy to biology. Researchers at the University of Washington are behind this year’s award for the development of a tool called RoseTTAfold that amazed scientists in the physical and life sciences with its speed and precision in predicting how proteins form three-dimensional shapes. It’s the breakthrough of the year together with AlphaGold.
“The advancement in protein folding is one of the greatest in history both in terms of scientific achievements and enabling future research,” wrote H. Holden Thorp, biochemist and editor-in-chief of the journal Science.
