Top 10 Scientific Discoveries and Medical Breakthroughs of 2007, According to Time Magazine
Posted On Tuesday, December 11, 2007 by JK Wise
Today, Time Magazine published their "Top 10" lists for 2007. There are 50 lists total, in 5 different categories.
All of the ones in the Science category are very interesting, and you can quickly view all of the slides of the top 10 slideshows for subcategories "Scientific Discoveries" and "Medical Breakthroughs" by clicking the links that I have provided below.
Within these subcategories, I will briefly note only the numbered items that are relevant to this blog.
Here are the links:
"Top 10 Scientific Discoveries of 2007" Time Magazine
#1 are the most recent "induced pluripotent stem cell" (IPS cells) breakthroughs, in which two groups "reprogrammed" human skin cells into embryonic stem cell-like cells, in other words cells that are similar yet not identical to embryonic stem cells, without any use or destruction of human embryos. The "reprogramming" involved inserting four particular stem cell-associated genes using retroviral vectors. To read more about very recent news about this stem (IPS) cell research and about the IPS "reprogramming" protocol click here for a great summary post by The Daily Transcript blog. In addition to new scientific publications, he also links to today's NY Times Science Section article featuring Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, which I found very interesting, as well as the informative comments of Dr. Alex Palazzo himself from The Daily Transcript.
#2 is titled "Human Mapped" and it refers to the publication of the entire genome of J. Craig Venter, the first such genome ever published of a single person (publication link).
#5 is is titled "Building a Human Heart Valve" and is about a team of researchers led by Dr. Magdi Yacoub engineering functional human heart-valve tissue using bone marrow stem cells (also known as "mesenchymal stem cells" or "multipotent stromal cells").
"Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs of 2007" Time Magazine
#9 is titled "New Source for Stem Cells" and is about the discovery that the abundant amniotic fluid-derived stem (AFS) cells could have the potential to differentiate into almost any cell type. This was discovered and investigated by the research group led by Dr. Anthony Atala at the Wake Forest University Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Here is the Wake Forest University press release and the abstract of the published paper in Nature Biotechnology.