We investigate three of 2024’s biggest breakthroughs in biology including new understanding of the common ancestor of all modern life, a surprising discovery about the connection between the brain and the immune system, and the ongoing impact of AI on the field of biology which led to the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for researchers working on protein structure prediction and protein design.
00:05 Modern Life's Ancient Ancestor An interdisciplinary group applied the latest tricks of phylogenetics — using genes and genomes to build evolutionary trees, to trace all of modern life back to our shared ancestor. This ancient cell, or population of cells, is known as LUCA, which stands for “last universal common ancestor,” the one from which everything alive today emerged. The work suggested that LUCA was a surprisingly complex cell and dated LUCA to some 4.2 billion years ago, earlier than researchers had thought.
04:50 Surprising Brain-Body Connection One of the most mind-blowing discoveries of the year is about the integration of the brain and body. Most immunologists have long assumed that the immune system is self-regulating. For the first time, researchers have found a neural circuit, located in the brainstem, that adjusts the immune system. This circuit senses inflammatory molecules in the body and then dials their levels up or down to protect healthy tissues
09:18 AI Transforms Protein Science In 2024, hardly a week could go by without some big new paper related to Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold2: a neural network that can accurately predict the three-dimensional structure of a folded protein from the one-dimensional string of its amino acid molecules In May, Google DeepMind released AlphaFold3, which predicts the shapes of proteins as they interact with other molecules. Then, in October, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to John Jumper and Demis Hassabis from Google DeepMind, the creators of AlphaFold2, and David Baker from the University of Washington, who revolutionized the design of proteins using AI.