The 20 biggest and best science stories of 2019

Science

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1 The first photo of a black hole

The first results from the Event Horizon Telescope, a network of terrestrial telescopes that turned our planet into a giant eye to offer us what has undoubtedly been the scientific image of the year, were finally published on 10 April. The 347 participating researchers, handling immense volumes of data, had to develop new algorithms to obtain the first low resolution photo of the super-massive black hole in the centre of the giant galaxy M87, a colossus of 6.5 billion solar masses located 55 million light years away.

2 Artificial Life-Scientists Created Bacteria With a Synthetic Genome

Scientists have created a living organism whose DNA is entirely human-made — perhaps a new form of life, experts said, and a milestone in the field of synthetic biology. Researchers at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Britain reported on 15 May that they had rewritten the DNA of the bacteria Escherichia coli, fashioning a synthetic genome four times larger and far more complex than any previously created.

3 Gene-edited cells used to treat sickle cell disease

Researchers at the Sarah Cannon Research Institute in Nashville, Tennessee, announced in November that they had used genetically edited cells to treat sickle cell disease – a painful and until now incurable condition that impacts millions of people in the United States and around the world. Doctors used cells from a patient's bone marrow that had been modified using CRISPR cas9 gene-splicing technology and reintroduced the cells back into the patient's body.