Whats next in science?

Senior research scientist,

Space Science Institute

The Dawn spacecraft will get to orbit around a very large asteroid called Vesta in July. Its going to be fascinating to see what it looks like up close. Were going to be able to start answering very broad questions about the history of asteroids.

Asteroids first formed at the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago,developing into small proto-planets. The biggest asteroids,like the 330-mile-wide Vesta,might have grown into full-blown planets if not for the pull of Jupiters powerful gravitational field. Since then,collisions have blasted asteroids apart into smaller bodies. Astronomers want to know how planetlike asteroids like Vesta became. Its possible,for example,that Vesta developed a heavy core and might even have a magnetic field. Once the Dawn takes a close look at Vesta,it will move on to another giant asteroid,Ceres,which has water-bearing minerals and perhaps even a weak atmosphere. By comparing the two asteroids,astronomers hope to learn about early planet formation.

Conservation ecology

Stuart L. Pimm

Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology,Duke University

I think this year,the time will come to get a sense of just how much marine biodiversity is out there. And that will be really exciting,because for a long time we really havent known. There hasnt been a sense of whats happening out there.

In 2000,an international network of 2,700 scientists began the Census of Marine Life,the most ambitious attempt in scientific history to catalog the life dwelling in the worlds oceans. After a decade of trawling the seas and making 30 million observations,the project came to an end this year. The researchers unveiled dazzling photographs of some of the 6,000 or so new species they discovered.

Now they are busy crunching the data to come up with estimates of how many species of animals and other organisms are in the oceans.

Game design

Jane McGonigal

Director of game research/development,Institute for the Future

Were going to see games tackling womens rights. Were going to see games around climate change. Were going to see games around medical innovation,that doctors are going to play.

In August,the journal Nature published a paper on protein folding with 56,000 co-authors. Researchers at the University of Washington had set up a program that ran on peoples idle computers,using their free computer power to search for the accurate shape of proteins. But they eventually realised that the people who owned the computers themselves could help nudge the molecules into their proper shape. The scientists took advantage of this crowd-sourced intelligence with a game,called Foldit,that allowed people to compete with each other to become championship folders. Foldits community of online gamers exploded,and theyve driven the science of protein folding forward accordingly.

Ocean science

Michael J. McPhaden

Senior scientist,Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory

Were going to deploy lots and lots of new kinds of instruments in the Indian Ocean that will be out there for decades. The data were collecting is going to revolutionise our understanding of the system.

The oceans,covering 70 per cent of the planet,remain a barely explored world. And in that world,the Indian Ocean has been particularly mysterious. In October 2011,an international team of scientists will be converging on the Indian Ocean for a campaign called Dynamo short for Dynamics of the Madden-Julian Oscillation. Deploying sensors across much of the ocean,they will try to track an oscillation from its earliest stages. If Dynamo is a success,it will help scientists understand the conditions that trigger a new oscillation and how to predict its effects far and wide.

Climate change

Ken Caldeira

Climate scientist,Carnegie Institution

Well get to see whether the climate models have really improved since the last set of IPCC reports. My wager is that most of the improvements will be modest,and not represent a quantum leap in predictive capability.

Every few years,the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change publishes reports on the state of climate science and what we can expect from the climate in the future. In its latest report,published in 2007,the group concluded that most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases that humans have pumped into the atmosphere.

Genomics

David Haussler

Director,Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering,University of California

Youll have a number of reports where people will have their genome sequenced,but there will be new types of genomes being read. We can read genomes from your immune cells. They adapt throughout your lifetime so they can protect you from diseases. Reading those genomes will be important,and youre going to hear a lot about them next year.

It took 15 years and 3 billion to sequence the first human genome. Today the cost is down to 20,000,and is expected to continue to drop in years to come. As the price falls,scientists are sequencing human genomes at a faster rate. Strictly speaking,each of us carries many different genomes,rather than just one. Every time a cell divides,theres a small chance that it will make a mistake in copying its genes. The mutations that cancer cells acquire,for example,are often crucial for their ability to spread and resist chemotherapy. Immune cell genomes change as well,but most of the time those changes keep us healthy rather than make us sick. By rearranging certain stretches of their DNA,immune cells can create new genes for antibodies and receptors. The International Cancer Genome Consortium started up in April,with the goal of sequencing 25,000 genomes from a wide range of cancers. Next year,we will see some of the first fruits of this collaboration.

Engineering

Charles M. Vest

President,National Academy of Engineering

Were going to see in surprisingly short order that biological inspiration and biological processes will become central to engineering real systems. Its going to lead to a new era in engineering.

In the 20th century,engineers and biologists dwelt in different universes. The biologists picked apart cells and tissues to see how they worked,while the engineers designed bridges,buildings and factories based on what they understood about physics and chemistry. In recent years,however,engineers have begun paying very close attention to life. Evolution has fine-tuned living things for billions of years,giving them many of the propertiesefficiency,strength,flexibilitythat engineers love. Now biologically inspired engineering is taking hold in many engineering departments. In some cases,engineers are trying to mimic nature. In other cases,they are actually incorporating living things into their designs. Researchers at Delft University in the Netherlands,for example,are developing bacteria-laced concrete. When cracks form,the bacteria wake from dormancy and secrete limestone,in effect healing the concrete.

Neuroscience

André A. Fenton

Professor,Center for Neural Science,N.Y.U.

I expect we will see the physical organisation of a memory within the brain.

For decades neuroscientists searched through the brain,in pursuit of physical markers of memories. They found evidence that memories form through the contact of neurons. They grow new branches to communicate with other neurons,and old branches become stronger or weaker. In just the past few years,Fenton and other researchers have discovered that one molecule present in those branches,known as PKMzeta,maintains memories. Block PKMzeta,and the memory vanishes. This discovery opens up an exciting prospect. Scientists could train animals to perform some simple task and then compare the brains of the animals that learned with those of the ones that didnt. There should be a unique sprinkling of PKMzeta molecules in the animals that formed the new memory. Scientists could then map all the neurons and their branches that were required for the animals to remember what they learned. For the first time in history,scientists would be able to see a memory.

Biotechnology

Rob Carlson

Principal,Biodesic

It seems pretty likely within this year someone will show how to go from an adult peripheral blood draw to pluripotent stem cells. It means anyone who wants to try to make stem cells will be able to give it a whirl.

The cells in an embryo can give rise to any kind of tissue in the adult body. But once they commit to being muscle cells,or some other type of cell,theres no going back. A lot of research has gone into finding a way to induce adult cells to turn back into pluripotent stem cells. Someday it might be possible to use them to grow back damaged organs from a persons own cells. In September,Derrick J. Rossi and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School created artificial versions of RNA molecules,the templates that cells use to build proteins. The cells made proteins that reprogrammed them into pluripotent stem cells.This method has a drawback too but he and his colleagues used a type of cella fibroblast. This July,George Q. Daley of Harvard Medical School and his colleagues had success using a different route: they drew blood from healthy human donors and genetically reprogrammed the cells to become pluripotent stem cells. Advances in the field would make producing stem cells cheap,fast and relatively easy. It may even be possible for dedicated amateurs to set up stem cell labs in their own garage.

Mathematics

Steven Strogatz

Professor of Applied Mathematics

Cornell University

Were going to see scientific results that are correct,that are predictive,but are without explanation. We may be able to do science without insight,and we may have to learn to live without it. Science will still progress,but computers will tell us things that are true,and we wont understand them.

Computers have been taking over more and more of the things humans used to do,including getting driving directions and operating subway trains. Theyve even started making serious inroads into the heart of science. Eureqa,for example,is an automated scientist created by a Cornell engineer,Hod Lipson,and his students. In 2009,they reported that simply by observing a pendulum,Eureqa can rediscover some of Newtons laws of physics. In 2011,automated scientists are poised to make major contributions to science. Lipson and his students are looking for hidden patterns in the networks of proteins that break down food in cells,for example,and theyve set up a website where people can download Eureqa free of charge and discover laws of nature for themselves. But while the equations that automated scientists offer are very good at making predictions,they are often inscrutable to human scientists. We may have to programme computers to explain their discoveries to us.