Field
Molecular biology, genetics, evolution, and the machinery of living cells — from the structure of DNA to genome editing.
Computer Science & AI
AlphaFold solved a 50-year grand challenge in biology: predicting a protein's three-dimensional shape from its amino-acid sequence. Its accuracy approached that of experimental methods, transforming structural biology.
This paper turned a bacterial immune system into a programmable gene-editing tool. Doudna, Charpentier and colleagues showed that the Cas9 enzyme, guided by a single engineered RNA, can be directed to cut any chosen DNA sequence.
Takahashi and Yamanaka showed that ordinary adult cells can be reprogrammed back into an embryonic-like, pluripotent state using just four genes. These induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can become any cell type, without the ethical concerns of embryonic stem cells.
The public Human Genome Project's first analysis of the human genome sequence. It presented a draft covering most of the genome and drew early conclusions about the surprisingly small number of human genes.
The paper announcing Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. It proved that the nucleus of a fully differentiated cell can be reset to support the development of a whole new animal.
Medicine & Physiology
This paper made the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) practical by using a heat-stable DNA polymerase (Taq) from a hot-spring bacterium. The change let DNA be copied through repeated heating and cooling without adding fresh enzyme each cycle.
Earth & Space Science
The Alvarez team proposed that a giant asteroid impact caused the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs. Their evidence was a worldwide layer of iridium — an element rare on Earth but common in asteroids — at the geological boundary.
The one-page paper that proposed the double-helix structure of DNA. Watson and Crick described two helical chains coiled around a common axis, with bases paired in the interior — a structure that immediately suggested how genetic information is copied.
Published in the same issue of Nature as Watson and Crick's model, this paper presented the X-ray diffraction evidence — including the famous 'Photo 51' helical pattern — that constrained the structure of DNA to a helix with the phosphates on the outside.
Avery, MacLeod and McCarty identified DNA — not protein — as the molecule that carries hereditary information. By purifying the 'transforming principle' that changes harmless pneumococci into virulent ones, they showed it was deoxyribonucleic acid.