News and Reviews

Check out www.bluesci.co.uk, our Facebook page, or @BlueSci on Twitter for regular science news and updates

AI: Thinking in Three Dimensions

A classical problem in structural biology is the ‘protein folding problem’ — that is, figuring out what final 3D conformation a protein takes. The 3D shape of a protein is important as it is closely linked to its function, but there are many theoretical ways that one protein could fold into its final shape. Biologists have traditionally resorted to expensive and laborious techniques for solving the problem, such as nuclear magnetic resonance and x-ray crystallography. However, DeepMind’s revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI), AlphaFold, could provide a much more accessible solution.

British AI company DeepMind, co-founded by Cambridge alumnus Demis Hassabis, specialises in designing neural network systems: each is a series of computer algorithms that collectively act like a human brain, in that they can extract and learn underlying relationships in a dataset and apply this to new data, albeit much more powerfully. Learning from past examples, AlphaFold is able to take the sequence of amino acids that make a protein — its building blocks — and predict the final 3D structure with incredible accuracy: better than all other teams that entered the CASP14 protein folding contest and very close to the experimentally determined structures.

Although experimental data still remains the gold standard for determining protein structure, AlphaFold’s immediate impact will be to reduce the amount of data needed to reliably predict a protein’s 3D shape, empowering research that was simply not feasible beforehand. AL

A Stomach-Churning Discovery

Our impulse to look away from disgusting images is triggered by changes in the electrical rhythm of our stomach, according to new research from the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge. The study, published in Current Biology, showed that domperidone, an anti-nausea medicine which acts on this stomach rhythm, was able to significantly reduce the time volunteers spent looking away from a series of disgusting images.

The effect of domperidone is to stabilise the rhythm of electrical signals in the stomach muscles — signals which can cause involuntary vomiting if strongly disrupted by powerful feelings of revulsion. In the study, some volunteers were given domperidone while others received a placebo, and they were then shown a selection of disgusting and neutral images. At a certain point in the study, the volunteers were given a monetary incentive for spending longer looking at the disgusting images. The researchers found that, in the round of testing after the incentive was applied, volunteers who had been given domperidone spent significantly longer than the placebo group looking at the disgusting images.

‘We’ve shown that by calming the rhythms of our stomach muscles using anti-nausea drugs, we can help reduce our instinct to look away from a disgusting image’, explained Professor Tim Dalgleish, one of the researchers from the MRC Unit, ‘but just using the drug itself isn’t enough: overcoming disgust avoidance requires us to be motivated or incentivised. This could provide us with clues on how we can help people overcome pathological disgust clinically, which occurs in a number of mental health conditions and can be disabling.’ ZLB

Making a Map of the Universe

The Gaia mission was launched in 2013 and aims to help us map the universe, as there is still a great deal of uncertainty in the distances of the stars and galaxies around us. Knowing the distances to nearby stars may help calculate brightness of the stars and model stellar evolution. From this rudimentary interstellar ruler, it is possible to measure the distances and brightness of nearby galaxies, and even those distant enough that individual stars cannot be observed. Recently, the European Space Agency has released a new round of preliminary data from the Gaia mission, featuring an additional 34 months’ worth of observational data including new types of analysis on a much bigger scale than before.

The most accurate way of measuring interstellar distances — short of travelling to the stars themselves — is to measure the infinitesimal shifts, or parallax, of these pinpoints of light over the course of half a year as the Earth moves from one side of its solar orbit to the other. Gaia is well suited to measure these parallaxes with greater precision than ground-based telescopes, which must contend with the distortion of incoming starlight by ripples in the atmosphere. The new information will ultimately help in determining the distribution of mass in the universe, and the high precision to which objects can now be localised in the sky will also be useful in other areas of physics, such as the detection of exoplanets or multiple-star systems. This astounding new data is only part of the full dataset which is scheduled for release in the middle of next year. CS

A Life on Our Planet Narrated by Sir David Attenborough

Natural historian Sir David Attenborough’s latest documentary ‘A Life on Our Planet’ is his witness statement. He warns that, without intervention, the global ecological decline which occurred throughout his lifetime will only be exacerbated by following generations.

Presented as a monologue, Sir Attenborough takes you on a journey through his life’s work, drawing on his previous documentaries as reference points. As expected of his documentaries, awe-inspiring images of wildlife instil wonderment in the audience. However, unlike his previous work, this documentary places emphasis on the interconnectivity between the decline of the natural world and the growth of our species and its unsustainable habits. There is an obvious ultimatum — we can continue our destruction of ecosystems across land and sea, or we can change. It concludes, more cheerfully, with small changes that have already had beneficial effects for ecosystems and ways in which societies have adopted these new attitudes. Although the negative impact of our species on the natural world is familiar to us, by laying it bare before the audience, Sir Attenborough’s statement is an emotive call to action for all. DA

Winter Birds, Lars Jonsson

Lars Jonsson’s Winter Birds is a book for those who want more from birding than simply ticking a species off a list. Jonsson explores over 50 species in exquisite and charming detail, all of which he can watch during the winter months from the window of his studio on the Swedish island of Gotland. However, this book is much more than a basic field guide. Jonsson accompanies each entry with beautiful watercolour drawings — to be expected since he is, after all, known first and foremost as an ornithological illustrator. The book is full of personal anecdotes from Jonsson’s time spent observing the birds’ behaviour and is littered with the perspective of an artist trying to capture every detail and hue of plumage. It makes for a beautiful read, effortlessly intertwining cultural snippets of etymology and history with ecological information. But it’s hard to know quite how to classify the book; it functions as an exceptionally beautiful field guide, a coffee-table book for dipping in and out of, and simply as a work of art. Jonsson’s refusal to write a book that fits into a conventional box just adds to its novelty and charm. KH

Jocelyn Tang

Eva Pillai

Hope Beyond Hype, EuroStemCell

Hope Beyond Hype is a short comic which offers general readers a glimpse into the world of stem cell biomedical research. This comic captivates its audience by introducing novel treatments for patients with severe skin conditions or corneal blindness. While these new therapies have inspired an explosion of research, a refreshing twist in the plot explains that new treatments need to pass through meticulous testing and approval processes before they are rolled out.

The authors realistically showcase the vigorous stages of laboratory research, where years of diligent optimisation precede moments of great discovery. While novel scientific breakthroughs are hard-earned achievements worthy of celebration, one must acknowledge that it often takes years to bring clinical innovations from bench to bedside. Innovative treatments have to undergo multiple stages of clinical trials under strict regulations to ensure that patients receive a safe and effective cure. Unfortunately, rogue clinics which sell ineffective or unsafe stem cell products also operate across the globe. Furthermore, misinformation and overhyping can mislead the general public. To address these problems, this story highlights the importance of dialogue between patient communities, scientists, and policymakers to debunk myths and take hold of true hope. To continue this dialogue, readers are encouraged to visit EuroStemCell’s website, where European Union-funded scientists give independent expert-reviewed information on stem cells. DH