Science Day 2021 by Govinda Bhisetti

Science Day 2021
Wednesday, December 29, 2021
9:45 AM Zoom session starts / Nobel Ceremony
10:00 - 10:15 AM Introductions - all students
10:15 - 12:00 PM Nobel Prizes 2021
12:00 - 1:00 PM Lunch & Chitchat on 2021 happenings
1:00 - 2:00 PM SARS CoV2 variants, vaccines, treatmemts
2:00 - 2:30 PM Insulin - 100 years
2:30 - 4:00 PM Breakthroughs in Science 2021
4:00 - 4:30 PM Q&A
Govinda Rao Bhisetti, Ph. D.
Science Day 2021 - Govinda Bhisetti 1

Nobel Award Ceremony 2021
Cancelled due to pandemic
10 December 2021
2021 Nobel Prize award ceremony – YouTube
https://youtu.be/ieuZUQRkZBU

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This year's monetary award is 10 million Swedish krona (SEK) - US$1.1 million
Nobel Prize
"…The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: The
capital shall be invested by my executors in safe securities and shall constitute a fund, the
interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the
preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind ... ; one part to the person
who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or
medicine; ... The prizes for ... shall be awarded by ... that for physiology or medicine by the
Carolinska Institute in Stockholm; ... "
Alfred Nobel’s “will” was signed in Paris on 27 November 1895. The statutes of the Nobel
Foundation, which were officially approved by the Swedish Government on 29 June 1900.
120 years ago, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded, including the first one in Physics for the
discovery of X-rays.
https://youtu.be/ykUXN0gkt7M
https://youtu.be/uZLK_J2NfX0
Science Day 2021 - Govinda Bhisetti

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Prize Announcement Schedule
• Monday, October 4, 2021 PHYSIOLOGY or MEDICINE
• Tuesday, October 5, 2021 PHYSICS
• Wednesday, October 6, 2021 CHEMISTRY
• Thursday, October 7, 2021 LITERATURE
• Friday, October 8, 2021 PEACE
• Monday, October 11, 2021 ECONOMICS
Nobel Day: December 10, 2021

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2021 LITERATURE PRIZE
Born in 1948, Abdulrazak Gurnah mainly grew up on the island of
Zanzibar in the Indian Ocean before arriving in England as a
refugee at the end of the 1960s. Following the peaceful liberation
from the UK’s colonial rule in December 1963, when Zanzibar went
through a revolution under the regime of President Abeid Karume, it
led to the oppression and persecution of citizens of Arab origin.
However, Gurnah belonged to the victimised ethnic group and was
forced to leave his family and his country, which was called the
Republic of Tanzania. He was unable to return to Zanzibar until
1984.
Bibliography – a selection
Works in English
Memory of Departure. – London : Jonathan Cape, 1987
Pilgrims Way. – London : Jonathan Cape, 1988
Dottie. – London : Jonathan Cape, 1990
Paradise. – London : Hamish Hamilton, 1994
Admiring Silence. – London : Hamish Hamilton, 1996
By the Sea. – London : Bloomsbury, 2001
Desertion. – London : Bloomsbury, 2005
The Last Gift. – London : Bloomsbury, 2011
Gravel Heart. – London : Bloomsbury, 2017
Afterlives. – London : Bloomsbury, 2020
“I just want to write as trustfully as I can, without trying
to say something noble."
"for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in
the gulf between cultures and continents."…"

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2021 PEACE PRIZE
"for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for
democracy and lasting peace”
Maria Ressa, 58, the chief executive and co-
founder of the online news platform Rappler,
praised for exposing abuses of power and growing
authoritarianism under the Philippine president,
Rodrigo Duterte, is facing charges that could lead
to about 100 years in jail.
Dimitry Muratov, 59, the editor-in-chief of
Novaya Gazeta is as one of the most prominent
defenders of freedom of speech in Russia today.
“Novaya Gazeta is the most independent
newspaper in Russia today, with a fundamentally
critical attitude towards power,”

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The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in
Economic Sciences

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How much more you would earn
if you chose to study longer?
For men born in the US during the
1930s, earnings were, on average, 7%
higher for those with one additional
year of education.
How do we know that the extra year of
education is the cause of higher
income?
Angrist and Krueger were able to use
the natural experiment to establish a
causal relationship showing that more
education leads to higher earnings: the
effect of an additional year of education
on income was 9%.

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Discovery of Receptors that
sense temperature and touch
https://youtu.be/PPO8N2ZnslI

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How do we sense our environment?
David Julius’ presentatopn:
https://youtu.be/bOLHKX0Li3M Science Day 2021 - Govinda Bhisetti

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Receptors of temperature perception
Transient receptor potential vanilloid 1
Transient receptor potential melastatin 8

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Touch and Propioception
funambulism
Ardem Patapotian on his discovery
https://youtu.be/6dJqLjsOSkE

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Receptors of touch and temperature perception

Receptors of touch and temperature perception

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PHYSICS

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Carbon Dioxide and Global Temperature
Explained
https://youtu.be/6WSPf2zTdMg
Announcement
https://youtu.be/M6-HH4uLwys
Manabe demonstrated how increases in the amount of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase global
temperature, laying foundations for current models.

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Climate fingerprints
Hasselmann created a model that linked
weather and climate, helping explain why
climate models can be reliable despite the
seemingly chaotic nature of the weather.

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Interplay of disorder and fluctuations
Parisi “built a deep physical and
mathematical model” that made it possible to
understand complex systems in fields as
different as mathematics, biology,
neuroscience and machine learning.
More videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DCZyAuY1oY

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CHEMISTRY

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Asymmetry in Chemistry
A carbon atom bonded to four different atoms/groups loses all symmetry
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
https://youtu.be/MYOsCjbNOkI
Myth of orange vs. lemon
https://youtu.be/W9JpRg8M1qk

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Catalysis
Enzymes are highly efficient catalysts. They speed up reactions up to 10 million times as
compared to the uncatalyzed reactions.
Prior to 2000, metals were used to catalyze organic reactions in the lab.
Catalysis is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by
adding a substance known as a catalyst

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Advent of Modern Oragnocatalysis:
Asymmetric Aminocatalysis

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Aldol reaction

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Q & A

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2021: Second Year of COVID19
Coronavirus Cases Worldwide:
282,684,232
Deaths:
5,428,123
Recovered:
251,623,469
Updated: December 28, 2021, 20:23 GMT

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Outbreaks in 2009 …
Is Omicron less
fatal as it is
spreading faster?

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Virus?
• A microscopic (< 0.2 uM) infectious agent
• “Non-living” entity – “metabolically inert”
• Typically contain DNA or RNA
• Can only replicate (propagate) inside the
living cells of organisms
• Can adapt to immune response as it
mutates rapidly
• Highly diverse, limited host range
• Survival dilemma?
• Difficult to treat viral infections
• Viruses are responsible for about 60% of
all infectious diseases
• Viral infections cause or contribute to 20%
of all human cancers
Virus has smallest genome

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Virus replication is not foolproof

Alpha (B.1.1.7)
Delta (B.1.617.2)
Omicron (B.1.1.529)
New faces
(variants) of
COVID19 Virus

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Virus mutants of concern named using
Greek alphabets

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SARS CoV-2 mutants

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US Approved Treatments for COVID19
COVID-19 Vaccines Authorized for Emergency Use or FDA-Approved
Comirnaty and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine
Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine
Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine
SARS-COV-2-targeting Monoclonal Antibodies
REGEN-COV (Casirivimab and Imdevimab)
Sotrovimab
Bamlanivimab and Etesevimab
SARS-COV-2-targeting Monoclonal Antibodies
remdesvir (Gilead)
paxlovid (Pfizer)
Molnupairavir (Merck)
Widespread vaccination is the best option to protect everyone
from COVID-19 and related complications.

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Children and teens who are fully vaccinated can safely resume many activities that they did prior to the pandemic.
Everyone ages 16 years and older can get a COVID-19 booster shot.
The federal government is providing the COVID-19 vaccine free of charge
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/recommendations/children-teens.html

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https://youtu.be/OYH1deu7-4E

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Q & A

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1. Protein structures for all
2. Ancient soil DNA comes of age
3. Fusion’s day in the Sun?
4. Potent pills boost COVID-19 arsenal
5. A psychedelic PTSD remedy
6. Artificial antibodies tame infectious
diseases
7. NASA lander uncovers the Red Planet’s
core
8. At last, a crack in particle physics’
standard model?
9. CRISPR fixes genes inside the body
10. Embryo ‘husbandry’ opens windows into
early development
Breakthrough of the Year 2021
23 December 2011
https://www.science.org/content/article/breakthrough-2021

10. Embryo ‘husbandry’
opens windows into early
development
helps in understaning
miscarriages and birth defects
• Studies on human embryos are constrained by legal, practical, and ethical limitations.
• Mouse embryos reared far longer than before, and embryo replicas made from human
stem cells or reprogrammed adult cells are unveiled this year for these studies.
• Scientists have struggled to grow mouse embryos outside a mother mouse’s body for
much longer than 3 or 4 days. But in March, one team reported a recipe for stretching
that to 11 days. A key step, they found, was rotating the jars containing the embryos on
a device that resembles a miniature Ferris wheel.
• One team made blastocyst replicas from human embryonic stem cells and induced
pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, stem cells reprogrammed from specialized adult cells.
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A mouse embryo grows in a rotating jar. Such embryos can help
researchers better understand the early stages of human development.

9. CRISPR fixes
genes inside the body
Scientists deployed
CRISPR directly in the
body. In small studies, the
strategy reduced a toxic
liver protein and modestly
improved vision in people
with inherited blindness.
• The gene-editing tool CRISPR had its first clinical victory in 2020, when it appeared to
cure people with two inherited blood disorders, sickle cell disease and beta-
thalassemia.
• Those treatments took place in a lab dish: Scientists removed defective blood stem
cells from patients, edited them, and reinfused the cells into patients.
• But getting CRISPR to work inside a person, or in vivo, poses significant challenges.
Before CRISPR’s molecular components can correctly modify a specific gene, they
must be ferried safely to the right cells in the right quantities.
• Researchers at Intellia Therapeutics and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals gave six
patients an infusion of tiny fat balls encasing a guide RNA and the RNA instructions
for CRISPR’s genome-snipping enzyme. The team hoped the patients’ own liver cells
would take up the particles and make the CRISPR components, which would snip both
strands of DNA at the TTR gene. The cell’s repair system would mend the cuts
imperfectly, leaving the gene disabled. It worked: After 4 weeks, average blood levels
of TTR dropped 52% or 87%.
• In another study, researchers at Editas Medicine injected a harmless virus carrying
CRISPR DNA into the eyes of six adults with an inherited vision disorder. After 3 to 6
months, two patients—who had been almost completely blind—could sense more light,
and one could navigate an obstacle course in dim light.
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Guide RNA (blue) from a CRISPR injection
leads a DNA-cutting enzyme (white) to its
target (orange).

8. At last, a crack in
particle physics’
standard model?
The muon’s magnetism
gives scientists an
indirect way to search
for additional,
undiscovered particles.
• Standard model, accounts for three forces—electromagnetism,
the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force—and two
dozen fundamental particles (including muon).
• In an earlier (1997-2001), they found an anomaly in muon’s
magnetism and is confirmed this year by a purer muon beam.
• Tiny discrepancies from the standard model’s predictions
could yield more clues to the hoped-for new physics.
• Scientists hope to repeat these experiments next year at
Europe’s Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest atom
smasher.
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muons twirl like compass needles in a magnetic field mapped with an accuracy of 30 parts per billion (Fermi Accelerator Laboratory,)

7. NASA lander uncovers
the Red Planet’s core
bringing Mars’s planetary core
into focus.
• The interior of a rocky planet is a kind of time machine: Its dense core, viscous mantle, and hardened
crust can reveal how it coalesced, churned, and settled into what it is today.
• NASA’s InSight lander are bringing Mars’s planetary core into focus. InSight picked up a handful of
moderate quakes this year and helped chart the planet’s depths.
• Offsets in the quakes’ seismic waves revealed that the martian crust is layered and less than 40
kilometers thick—thinner than Earth’s continental crust. That thin shell would have let Mars quickly
shed its early internal heat.
• InSight found the martian mantle lacked the insulating lower layer seen in Earth’s. The mantle was
also shallow, squeezed between the crust and an unusually large, liquid core that occupies more than
half of Mars’s width.
• Scientists concluded that the core’s density is low, and that a mixture of light elements such as sulfur
likely keep its iron and nickel liquid, despite the planet’s rapid heat loss.
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Waves from mars-quakes showed the planet has a thin crust, a shallow mantle, and an unusually large liquid core

6. Artificial antibodies tame
infectious diseases
made inroads against SARS-CoV-
2 and other life-threatening
pathogens, including respiratory
syncytial virus (RSV), HIV, and
malaria parasites.
• Labmade antibodies called monoclonals have revolutionized the treatment of some cancers
and autoimmune diseases.
• SARS-CoV-2 mAbs showed promising results in clinical trials in 2020, and by late this year,
the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had granted emergency use authorization to three to
treat COVID-19 and, in some cases, prevent infection.
• To make monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), scientists isolate the most powerful antibodies from
lab animals and humans and reproduce them in massive quantities.
• With advances in cloning, animal models, and x-ray crystallography, researchers can now
make and screen more mAbs than ever before, simplifying their search.
• High costs and the need to infuse mAbs in a clinic have put them out of reach for many. But
as prices plummet, injections replace infusions, and more potent mAbs come to market, they
may become standard weapons in the infectious disease arsenal.
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Antibodies (red and blue) attack SARS-CoV-2 (purple) in
an artist’s concept.

5. A psychedelic PTSD
remedy
MDMA (3,4-methylenedioxy-
methamphetamine),
popularly called ecstasy,
significantly reduced
symptoms in patients with
post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD).
• 8 million adults in the US suffer from PTSD each year.
• Post-traumatic stress disorder is a “psychiatric disorder that can occur in people
who have experienced or witnessed a traumatic event such as a natural disaster,
a serious accident, war/combat, or other violent personal assault.”
• The mind-altering power of psychedelic drugs has raised hopes that they can
ease psychiatric disease, but few large, rigorous trials have shown they’re
effective.
• Academic labs and companies explore the potential of MDMA and other
psychedelics to treat conditions like depression, anxiety, and addiction.
• COMPASS Pathways announced positive results from a 233-participant
randomized trial of psilocybin, the substance in so-called magic mushrooms, in
people with treatment-resistant depression.
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4. Potent pills boost
COVID-19 arsenal
Antiviral pills that prevent
symptoms and death
• Antiviral pills from drugmakers Pfizer and Merck & Co. prevent
symptoms and death if taken early in infection.
• They are approved by FDA in December 23 and 24 by FDA.
• More antivirals are in clinical trials.
• Scientists are quick to stress that antivirals can’t replace
vaccination.
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3. Fusion’s day
in the Sun?
Fusion reaction that
came tantalizingly
close to reaching
official “breakeven,”
the point
• Fusion, which powers the Sun and other stars, has long been seen as a solution
to Earth’s energy problems. But it is notoriously difficult.
• In an August, the U.S. National Ignition Facility (NIF) produced a fusion reaction
that came tantalizingly close to reaching official “breakeven,” the point at which a
reaction produces more energy than the laser energy needed to kindle it.
• Researchers think burning plasma (fusion reaction) generated enough heat to
spread through the compressed fuel like a flame.
• The team is trying to understand the shot’s high yield and figure out how to tweak
starting conditions to do even better, by using larger or smoother fuel capsules,
more even layers of frozen fuel, or higher quality laser pulses. They’re also making
efforts to replicate the shot and private fusion projects are making progress.
• Many formidable challenges in materials science and engineering remain to be
tackled before fusion can become a practical power source.
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To produce NIF’s fusion shot, 192 laser beams converged around a tiny fuel pellet.

2. Ancient soil DNA
comes of age
“dirt DNA” to
reconstruct the identity
of cave dwellers around
the world
Antiviral pills that
prevent symptoms and
death
• DNA from fossils has transformed the study of human and animal evolution,
revealing unknown relationships, tracing early migrations. The entire field
depends on just 23 archaic genomes, 18 of them from Neanderthals.
• By 2003, evolutionary geneticists showed discarded DNA (the free-floating DNA
they shed into air, water, and soil) could persist for thousands of years. This year,
scientists used nuclear DNA to chart the human and animal occupation of three
caves.
• In Spain’s Estatuas Cave, nuclear DNA revealed the genetic identity and sex of
humans who lived there 80,000 to 113,000 years ago and suggested one lineage
of Neanderthals replaced several others after a glacial period that ended
100,000 years ago.
• In 25,000-year-old soil from Georgia’s Satsurblia Cave, scientists found a female
human genome from a previously unknown line of Neanderthals, along with the
genetic traces of a bison and a now-extinct wolf.
• By comparing 12,000-year-old black bear DNA from Mexico’s Chiquihuite Cave
with that of modern bears, scientists discovered that after the last ice age, the
cave bears’ descendants migrated as far north as Alaska.

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1. Artificial intelligence predicts how proteins fold
• Univ. of Washington AI protein folding discovery wins
‘Breakthrough of the Year’ award from Science
• With 20 amino acid building blocks that fit together like
beads on a string, the options for how an individual protein
might fold are numerous. Folding depends on multiple
molecular interactions within the protein and its
environment, which are constantly shifting during the
folding process.
• With 20 amino acid building blocks that fit together like
beads on a string, the options for how an individual protein
might fold are numerous. Folding depends on multiple
molecular interactions within the protein and its
environment, which are constantly shifting during the
folding process.
• Researchers traditionally decipher structures using
laborious techniques such as x-ray crystallography and
cryo–electron microscopy. But detailed molecular maps
only exist for about 170,000 of the 200 million known
proteins.
• “The breakthrough in protein folding is one of the greatest
ever in terms of both the scientific achievement and the
enabling of future research,” wrote H. Holden Thorp, a
biochemist and the Editor-in-Chief of Science in an
editorial.
Predicted structure (blue) and experimentally determined (green)
match almost perfectly.
AlphaFold2: a solution to a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology
November 2020

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Science Breakthrough of the Year 2020:
Protein structures for all
AI-powered predictions show proteins finding their shapes
https://www.science.org/content/article/breakthrough-2021#section_video
https://youtu.be/iUMpm3tYsVE

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Q&A
THE END
Science Day 2021 - Govinda
Bhisetti

Science Day 2021 by Govinda Bhisetti

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