Science's top ten scientific breakthroughs of the year: The perennial rice of Hu Fengyi's team of Yunnan University was selected, and life science accounted for more than half

On December 15, 2022, the top international academic journal Science released the 2000 Breakthrough of the year, and the Webb Space Telescope was selected as the first
breakthrough of the year.
More than half
of the breakthroughs in the field of life sciences.

Also selected as the top ten scientific breakthroughs of 2022 are:

Perennial rice that is easier to cultivate

AI gets creative

Amazing giant microorganisms

RSV vaccine breakthrough progress

Discover the virus that causes multiple sclerosis

The United States passes landmark climate law

Genetic variants that resist the Black Death have been found in European populations

Mankind's first asteroid defense test

DNA reconstructed paleoecosystems 2 million years ago

This article highlights 6 annual scientific breakthroughs
in the life sciences.

Perennial rice that is easier to cultivate

The world's main food crops – rice, wheat, maize – are annual crops that must be replanted
with each harvest.
This is heavy labor for farmers and can also lead to environmental problems
such as soil erosion.
Perennial crops can alleviate these burdens, but breeding crops that are sufficiently long-lived and productive has been a huge challenge
.

And this year, research by Hu Fengyi's team from Yunnan University in China showed that perennial rice is feasible, achieving one-time planting, multi-year growth, and high yields, which can save farmers heavy labor
.
The results of this study were published on November 7, 2022 in the journal Nature Sustainability under the title: Sustained productivity and agronomic potential of perennial rice [2].

The study details the results
of more than 20 years of research by Hu Fengyi's team to create perennial rice through distant hybridization between species.
Based on the interspecific hybridization of Asian cultivated rice and Changxiong wild rice, the research team successfully created multi-year rice, cultivated a series of perennial rice strains, and approved three perennial rice varieties, which is a
milestone in the field of global perennial food crop breeding.

The perennial rice variety "PR23" was planted continuously for 4 years, harvested twice a year, with an average yield of 6.
8 tonnes/ha per season, which is comparable
to the annual rice yield (6.
7 tons/ha).
The variety is rapidly being rolled out, with 15,000 hectares planted in southern China last year, a fourfold
increase from 2020.
PR23 and similar varieties are also being tested
in Africa.

Hu Fengyi (third from left)

Amazing giant microorganisms

Back in 1999, marine biologist Olivier Gros discovered a particular bacterium that, due to its size, was initially thought to be a fungus
.

On June 24, 2022, the Shailesh V.
Date team, Tanja Woyke team, Jean-Marie Volland team, and Olivier Gros team at the American Complex Systems Research Laboratory published a report in the journal Science titled: A centimeter-long bacterium with DNA contained in metabolically Active, membrane-bound organelles' research paper [3].

This study identified this centimeter-scale filamentous sulfur-oxidizing bacterium visible to the naked eye and named it Thiobacillus ornates, and DNA staining imaging showed that Thiobacillus ornateura has a large genome and is a polyploid cell
.
It contains more than 500,000 copies of the genome and has a genome sequence length of 11.
5 to 12.
2 megabp, which is much higher than other bacterial genomes and about the length of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome, but has a larger number of genes, up to about 11,788
.

This research upends conventional wisdom about bacteria and shakes the traditional idea
of dividing life into eukaryotes and prokaryotes.

RSV vaccine breakthrough progress

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) usually causes only mild cold-like symptoms, but in infants, the virus inflames the small airways in the lungs, and in older people, worsens existing lung and heart conditions
.

More than 50 years ago, research and development of an RSV vaccine was interrupted after an experimental vaccine candidate to prevent RSV killed two children in a clinical trial and hospitalized 80 percent of vaccinated people
.
Then it was discovered that the vaccine made from a chemically inactivated version of the whole RSV virus can only elicit relatively weak antibodies, which not only do not stop the virus infection, but also help RSV damage the respiratory tract
.

A key advance made in 2013 by Barney Graham and others at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases made the new RSV vaccine avoid these problems
.
Based on this finding, two RSV vaccines developed by GSK and Pfizer have confirmed in large-scale clinical trials that they can safely protect the two groups most affected by RSV: infants and the elderly, and both prevent severe disease in people over 60 years of age without causing serious side effects
.
These RSV vaccine candidates are likely to be approved
by regulators around the world next year.

Discover the virus that causes multiple sclerosis

Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a disease in which the immune system attacks neurons, affects about 2.
8 million people worldwide and starts with mild symptoms, including blurred vision, fatigue and numbness, but gradually progresses to an inability to speak or walk
.

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has been a major suspect in multiple sclerosis, a virus that infects most people in childhood and then lurks in
certain white blood cells.
Epstein-Barr virus is mainly transmitted through saliva and can cause infectious mononucleosis
in newly infected adolescents and young adults.
Antibodies to EBV are present in almost all patients with multiple sclerosis, but 95% of healthy adults do, making it difficult to determine whether EBV is the cause
of multiple sclerosis.

In January 2022, the journals Science and Nature each published a research paper [4 and 5], which confirmed that EBV infection increases the risk of multiple sclerosis by 32 times, which exceeds the increased
risk of lung cancer from smoking.
The latter reveals a potential mechanism by which EBV infection increases the risk of developing multiple sclerosis: a protein similar to one in the brain and spinal cord tricks the immune system into attacking nerve cells
.

These findings lay the groundwork for the prevention and treatment of multiple sclerosis, which could be eliminated by vaccination if vaccines against Epstein-Barr virus are effective in clinical trials
.

Genetic variants that resist the Black Death have been found in European populations

The Black Death, caused by Yersinia pestis, swept across Eurasia between 1346 and 1353 AD, killing up to 60% of the local population
.
This devastating pandemic must be a powerful selective force in favor of people
with particularly effective immune defenses.
Scientists have long wondered how this deadly plague left its mark on survivors
.

On October 10, 2022, the journal Nature published a research paper titled: Evolution of immune genes is associated with the Black Death [6].

The research team analyzed ancient DNA
in the bones of more than 500 people buried before, during and after the Black Death.
They found that Black Death survivors were more likely to carry genetic variants that enhance their immune response to Yersinia pestis, particularly a gene called ERAP2, which expresses the endoplasmic reticulum aminopeptidase 2 protein that helps immune cells recognize and fight pathogens
.

There are two versions of this gene, differing by only one base, one expressing the full-length reticulum aminopeptidase 2 protein and the other expressing the truncated endoplasmic reticulum aminopeptidase 2 protein
.
People who express this full-length protein are twice as likely to survive the Black Death as people who express truncated body protein
.

A century after the Black Death pandemic, the rapid spread of protective mutations in the ERAP2 gene in European populations is by far the strongest example of
natural selection in the human genome.
Today, 45% of Britons still have a protective mutation of the ERAP2 gene, which still protects them at the time, as the Black Death was endemic
in Europe and Asia until the 19th century.
But this protection comes at a cost, and mutations in this gene also increase the risk of autoimmune diseases such as Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis
.

DNA reconstructed paleoecosystems 200 million years ago

Until recently, the scientific community thought that DNA could only be preserved for about 1 million years
.
Genetic material older than that would be too degraded to be read
.
But that view was shattered in December
.

On December 7, 2022, researchers from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark published a research paper in Nature entitled: A 2-million-year-old ecosystem in Greenland uncovered by environmental DNA [7].

By analyzing the oldest recovered environmental DNA (eDNA), the team mapped what northern Greenland's ecosystem looked like about 2 million years ago, including animal and plant species
that once existed.
This research allows us to explore and understand an ancient ecosystem to an unprecedented degree, while revealing an ecosystem
with no modern equivalents.

The research team extracted and sequenced
DNA samples from 41 organic matter-enriched sediments collected from five different sites in Peary Land in Northern Greenland.
The climate was much warmer 2-3 million years ago than it is today, however, due to the scarcity of vertebrate fossils, little is known
about the biomes that inhabited the Arctic at that time.

The team used this extracted environmental DNA to recreate what an ancient ecosystem looked like: an open boreal forest
with poplars, birches and cypresses, as well as a variety of arctic and northern shrubs and herbs.
DNA records confirm the presence of hares, and mitochondrial DNA from the site also reveals traces of the presence of other animals, including mastodons, reindeer, rodents and geese
.
The team also recovered ancient DNA from marine organisms that suggested the existence of an Atlantic horseshoe crab (Limulus polyphemus) population
.
This may mean that the region had a warmer surface water environment in the early Pleistocene, consistent with
previous predictions.
The results demonstrate the potential
to trace the evolution of biomes 2 million years ago using ancient environmental DNA.

In addition, Science magazine has selected three Breakdowns of the Year, which will not be repeated in this article
.