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Credit: J. Martin and E. Olson, Northland College/Olson et al. 2021, Scientific Reports
The best science images of 2021
The South African springhare (Pedetes capensis) fluoresces hot pink under ultraviolet light, researchers reported in February. The animals join wombats and platypuses in an expanding glow-in-the-dark gang. But the springhare’s striking patterning and intense colour are unique among known biofluorescent mammals, say researchers — and the glow’s function remains a mystery.
See more of the year’s sharpest science shots, selected by Nature’s photo team.
Merck downgrades COVID pill results
Trial data submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) suggest that molnupiravir, an oral antiviral drug developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, is less effective than originally thought. The results showed that the pill decreased the risk of hospitalization from COVID-19 by 30%, down from the 50% reduction observed early in the trial. An FDA advisory panel still recommended granting an emergency authorization for the antiviral by a 13–10 decision. Monoclonal antibody treatments, by contrast, reduce the risk of severe COVID-19 by up to 85% — but they are costly and need to be administered intravenously.
A vaccine against RSV, a childhood killer
Most cases of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) are mild, but millions of people per year are hospitalized with the illness, and it is usually most severe in infants under two months old. Researchers have been trying for decades to develop a vaccine — and it now seems that one could be in reach. Four candidates and one monoclonal antibody treatment are in late-stage clinical trials.
Features & opinion
A myth warped science in Latin America
Researchers are trying to dismantle the flawed concept of mestizaje — racial mixing, especially between Indigenous peoples and the Spanish colonizers — that has fostered discrimination in Mexico, Brazil and other countries. The label ‘mestizo’ has been used in many genetic studies to misrepresent or ignore the histories of people with Indigenous or African ancestry, according to some researchers and activists. “The mestizo is everything and nothing. It’s not very descriptive,” says Mexican anthropologist Ernesto Schwartz-Marín. “Why do we look at these categories, born out of the arbitrary nature of the colonial conquest, as biologically significant?”
June Lindsey, a forgotten pioneer of DNA
In the story of the discovery of DNA, alongside Rosalind Franklin, there was another X-ray crystallographer whose contribution has been widely neglected: June Lindsey. Born June Broomhead, she discovered the structure of adenine and guanine — a key part of solving the DNA double-helix puzzle. In 1945, Lindsey joined the legendary Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, UK. “I think she had the best time of her life,” says her daughter Jane. That’s where DNA co-discoverer James Watson consulted Lindsey’s thesis, which sparked a new understanding of the makeup of the molecule of life.
Lindsey is the latest woman to be featured in Chemistry World’s ‘Significant Figures’ series, thanks to Briefing reader Alex MacKenzie. He wrote to us after we featured the edition about chemist Julia Lermontova, and I passed his comments on to Chemistry World. Lindsey died in November, at the age of 99, but in March MacKenzie wrote that Lindsey was “still with us, living in a retirement home in Ottawa, lucid and clear eyed, she remains a delight”. As he said in a previous interview, “I would love, ultimately, for her to be known.”
