英国媒体评出“2022年度十大科学进展”,中国吸入式疫苗入选
近日,英国《卫报》发布了由十位科学家选出的2022年度十项重大科学进展。从重返月球任务到快速充电电池技术突破,从推动全球平等获得早期天气预警到包容性科学的发展,成果涵盖了各个领域。
卫报报道截图
其中,中国的吸入式新冠疫苗以及中国科学院马越等人利用人工智能发现抗生素两项成果入选。
Two Chinese scientific achievements are included in the 10 biggest science stories of 2022 chosen by scientists, according to a report by the Guardian.
中国吸入式新冠疫苗
新冠大流行期间,疫苗研发的速度前所未有。
免疫学研究领域也取得了巨大进展。中国的吸入式新冠疫苗由曼彻斯特大学生物医学科学和公众参与教授希娜·克鲁克香克选入2022年度十大科学进展。
In COVID's boost to immune research category, the use of sniffable or inhale-able vaccines — mucosal vaccines, which are already used in China to tackle COVID 19 — was introduced by Sheena Cruickshank, professor of biomedical sciences and public engagement at the University of Manchester, the Guardian reported on Sunday .
12月22日,在长沙市天心区南托街道社区卫生服务中心,市民在接种吸入式新冠疫苗。图源:新华社
吸入式疫苗可诱导黏膜免疫,并可能提供针对呼吸道病毒的长期保护。克鲁克香克表示,对于有“针头恐惧症”的人来说,这类疫苗更具吸引力。如果这些新型新冠疫苗效果达到预期,那么很快每年的加强针注射将成为历史。
Cruickshank said the inhale-able vaccines, which is much more appealing for those of us who are needle-phobic, may offer long-term protection against respiratory viruses. If these new developments deliver on their promise, then one day soon the calls for annual shots could be a thing of the past, according to Cruickshank.
人工智能助力抗生素发现
抗菌药物耐药性被世界卫生组织列为人类面临的十大公共卫生威胁之一。
抗菌肽(Antimicrobial peptide, AMP)是传统抗生素的公认替代品,因为它们不太可能引发耐药性;然而,只有数量有限的这类分子进入临床实践,其中数十个正在进行临床和临床前试验。
中国科学院的马越和他的同事使用机器学习技术来识别由人类肠道微生物基因组序列编码的抗菌肽。该算法识别出2349个潜在的抗菌肽序列,其中,216个多肽是通过化学方法合成的,181个具有抑菌活性。
Ma Yue and his colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences used machine-learning techniques originally developed for natural language processing to identify antimicrobial peptides encoded by the genome sequences of microbes in the human gut. The algorithm identified 2,349 potential antimicrobial peptide sequences. Among them, 216 peptides were synthesized by chemical methods, and 181 were shown to have antimicrobial activity.
实验室中的抗生素药敏试验。图源:Getty
曼彻斯特生物技术研究所合成生物学教授高野恵理子高度赞扬了马越团队的工作。高野表示,该团队利用人工智能克服抗药性、补充了有效抗菌剂库,与此同时得以开发新药且成功率惊人。
In the AI new antibiotics category, Chinese scientist Ma Yue and his colleagues' efforts in using AI to overcome resistance and replenish our arsenal of effective antimicrobials while developing new drugs was praised by Eriko Takano, professor of synthetic biology at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. This is an impressive success rate, which would not have been possible without the aid of AI, according to Takano.
其他领域的重大突破也彰显出人类不凡的科学成就。让我们一起来了解一下其他八项重大科学进展吧:
The joint Nasa-Esa mission Dart (Double Asteroid Re-Direction Test) was an ambitious attempt to alter the trajectory of a small asteroid (Dimorphos) as it orbited a slightly larger asteroid (Didymos), by sending a spacecraft to crash into it. In October, we learned that the mission had been even more successful than anticipated, and that the orbit of Dimorphos had changed – showing that we could, if given sufficient time, alter the path of an asteroid if it were on a collision course with Earth.
We now have the technology to see many of these natural hazards coming, days in advance. And yet 2022 has been full of lethal events. Global heating is making these types of disasters worse.
Alerting people to danger, so they can take action, is the best way to prevent tragedy. We need equal access to skills and systems that were pioneered years ago. Critical, too, is the leadership to share information and act on the warnings that ensue.
This year saw a small but important advance in the treatment of sickle cell disease. This development brings hope to millions of people worldwide, but predominantly in Africa, the Indian subcontinent and South America.
这些进步激发了包容性科学发展的希望,在这种科学研究中,性别、种族和地点既不享有特权,也不被排斥。
Developments such as these excite hope of inclusive science where gender, ethnicity and location neither privilege nor exclude. 4
Congratulation to Prof James Maynard, who was awarded a Fields medal this year for his "spectacular contributions" to analytic number theory, "which have led to major advances in the understanding of the structure of prime numbers and in Diophantine approximation".
Congratulations also to one of the other Fields medallists, the Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska, the second woman to win the award. She was cited for many mathematical accomplishments, in particular her proof that an arrangement called the E8 lattice is the densest packing of spheres in eight dimensions.5
Early signs of diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's are often associated with changes in cell stiffness. This year, two research groups, one from Germany, and one from the US, published separate studies demonstrating groundbreaking improvements in a method to measure cell-stiffness, known as Brillouin microscopy. Developments in this technique this year have significantly advanced imaging speed and resolution, and reduced photo-damage, making the method now widely applicable for observing changes in cell mechanical properties in living animals.
This method will provide a powerful tool for early diagnosis of diseases such as cancer, atherosclerosis and Alzheimer's. It will also revolutionize how scientists can measure and track the mechanical changes of our cells during normal development, and critically improve our understanding of the importance of mechanical forces in biology.
诺奖颁给量子纠缠
Quantum entanglement untangled
"Spooky action at a distance." That's what Albert Einstein called quantum entanglement, which is when two quantum particles have to be considered as a single entity, since influencing one of them affects the other even when they are far apart.
Alongside this, companies are making bold commitments to become "nature positive", meaning that their activities should, overall, lead to nature being in a better state.
12月7日,一名与会者在加拿大蒙特利尔COP15第二阶段会议中国角拍照。来源:新华社
The October Nature paper by Chao-Yang Wang and co-authors described a way to charge energy-dense batteries incredibly quickly – in just a few minutes. It really highlights the phenomenal speed at which battery chemists, engineers and technologists are rising to the challenge.
We are also seeing huge progress in battery technologies based on cheap, abundant sodium instead of expensive and relatively rare lithium, as well as methods to make all these batteries far easier to recycle.
编辑:左卓
实习生:魏宁
来源:中国日报 科技日报 卫报
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