Sign up to receive our Elysium Newsletter, The Abstract as well as exclusive offers, promotions and more. Enter your email below:
ELYSIUM
The Abstract
October 2020
With so much change and uncertainty in the world, we’re thinking about how our perspective changes — and why. In this month’s Abstract, groundbreaking discoveries are awarded the Nobel Prize, the neuroscience behind our subjective experience of time, and how the skin microbiome is upending beliefs about cleanliness.
IN THE NEWS
Nobel Prize Winners Announced
Early October is Super Bowl season for science enthusiasts. This week the 2020 winners of the Nobel Prizes were announced by their respective committees and assemblies in Sweden. We took note of two in particular: the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine and the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
The first was awarded to three scientists — Harvey Alter, Michael Houghton, and Charles Rice — who discovered the hepatitis C virus. Their work, as STAT notes, “has helped speed the fight against the blood-borne hepatitis, a major global help problem that causes cirrhosis and liver cancer in people around the world.” It also opened the door for drug development.
The subject of the award for chemistry will come as no surprise — CRISPR —but it’s an important moment in science for two reasons. Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier shared the award for discovering the bacterial immune system that can be repurposed for DNA editing, the first science Nobel won by two women. Their discovery is also relatively recent compared to other Nobel discoveries, and it’s controversial, as Doudna and Charpentier have been locked in a patent battle with Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, MA.
These are third party articles about science that we find interesting but have no relationship to Elysium or any of our products. Elysium’s products are not intended to screen, diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
Are coffee plants at risk? A devastating fungus called coffee-leaf rust has been blooming on plants in Central and South America in recent years, causing more than $3 billion in damage. Can scientists help farmers replace the plants and keep up with the changing climate? (The Atlantic)
A breakthrough in DNA extraction. Scientists have successfully extracted insect DNA trapped in amber tree resin for up to six years. Does this mean the plot of Jurassic Park could become a reality? They’ll have to prove the technique works on samples 60 million years older, but it’s a start. (Forbes)
Why time feels subjective. Our sense of time is an “unsteady and subjective one, expanding and contracting like an accordion.” Researchers in Israel have figured out why — and it has to do with the mechanism in our brain that helps us learn through rewards and punishments. (Quanta)
175 years of science language. Scientific American investigated its entire 175-year archive to understand how frequently key words were used. It seems “certainty” peaked in 1850, and “uncertainty” in 2019. That sounds right.
(Scientific American)
Are you showering too much? Probably, according to the author of a new book about the science of skin, James Hamblin. In this interview, he challenges norms about hygiene and about what “being clean” means given the emerging science of the microbiome. (NPR)
TERM OF THE MONTH
CRISPR
/ˈkrɪspər/
Short for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” CRISPR are stretches of DNA that, combined with Cas proteins (hence, CRISPR-Cas9) act as a bacterial immune system by tracking down and cutting out DNA of invaders. Scientists have adapted CRISPR to edit the genome.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, and is intended for healthy adults, 18 years of age or older. Do not take this product if you are pregnant or nursing.
