There is little doubt this past year will be remembered for SARS-CoV-2, more commonly called COVID-19.
The pandemic dominated our newscasts, our political discourse, our social engagement, our economic analysis, and was the topic of well-over 65,000 scientific journal articles. COVID-19 was the big story in science.
This shouldn’t really come as a surprise. With over 1.8 million people dead due to the disease and another 80,000,000 infected, it has awakened the world to the potential of viruses. People who might never have considered what a coronavirus is or what it could do, now are familiar with the spiked balls of genetic information.
First reported in early January, and with some cases perhaps occurring in early December 2019, it took very little time for researchers to both identify the pathogen and sequence its genetic code. A Chinese-Australian team posted the virus’ genetic sequence in an open access forum on January 11.
By February, scientists had determined it latches on to the ACE-2 receptor - a very common receptor site found on the surface of many different types of cells in the body but particularly abundant in the lungs and the guts.
They were also able to show the disease can be transmitted from person-to-person by the inhalation of tiny aerosol particles. We all breathe tiny droplets in and out with each breath - this is the reason your glasses steam up when wearing a mask. The virus can ride within these droplets and make its way to another person’s lungs. Masks can help to reduce the dispersion of these aerosols, which is why they are now mandatory in public.
More recently, reports have demonstrated transmission of the virus occurs prior to a person showing symptoms. It is estimated half of all cases originate from people not showing any symptoms. Asymptomatic transmission is a new trick for viral transmission and part of the reason we are having such difficulty quashing the disease. Too many people are willing to engage in public activities because they feel fine when, in fact, they are sick.
But science in 2020 wasn’t all about COVID-19. For example, the research into climate change has continued.
There is little doubt in the minds of serious scientists that we are seeing the effects of climate change in the wildfires that devastated Australia last January and the subsequent wildfires that ate up huge swathes of Brazil, Siberia, and California. Indeed, it has been estimated as much as four per cent of California went up in smoke this past year.
Moreover, such fires are a self-reinforcing cycle as they pump carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, further enhancing climate change. While the shutdown in the world’s industrial activity and transportation sectors by the pandemic did induce a drop of around seven per cent in overall carbon dioxide emissions, forest fires made up about one-fifth of all emissions. It will be decades before all of the carbon dioxide released in the fires can be sequestered by the regeneration of the forests.
Meteorologists studying weather patterns in 2020 saw some 30 named Atlantic hurricanes, including the unprecedented occurrences of three storms simultaneously. Researchers tracking the Arctic sea ice saw the sheet shrink to the second smallest size on record. And scientists in Antarctica were able to explore under the ice shelf, using drone submarines, to discover a shift in ocean currents now bringing warm water to the Thwaites glacier. This mass of ice is increasingly unstable and will likely collapse in the near future.
But not all science news is bad. Science has now given us vaccines to fight COVID-19 and climate change can be managed with international cooperation.
Physicists have also been able to create a room temperature superconductor, the holy grail of condensed matter physics. Such a compound could allow for power transmission without loss, floating trains and levitating cars, and much more efficient electronic devices. Unfortunately, there is one catch - the material is only superconducting at extremely high pressures equivalent to those experienced at the centre of Earth!
But the research continues.
In the world of biochemistry, one of the major puzzles is understanding how and why proteins fold the way they do. Protein structure is often critically important to understanding function. This past year, cryo-electron microscopy finally achieved single atom resolution allowing for the structure of proteins to be examined more readily. And machine learning algorithms have allowed AI to understand how proteins fold in the first place.
But perhaps one of the most interesting science stories is the discovery that humans are not the only animals to domesticate other species of animals. The Longfin damselfish farm algae as food and employ shrimp as labourers to help tend the farm. In return, they provide protection from predators.
If nothing else, 2020 has taught us there is much more to learn about science.
