The Innovation | Innovation Focus in 2022
导 语
From James Webb Space Telescope to hydrogen production and flexible solar cells, The Innovation editorial teams review scientific breakthroughs in 2022.
2022年科技创新的焦点有哪些？从韦伯望远镜精美绝伦的宇宙照片到可控核聚变新突破，从海水中获取氢气到柔性太阳能电池……科学家们在各个前沿领域不断进展，编辑部从中票选了Innovation Focus 2022。
图1 藏在图片中的十大创新焦点
Redefining the Universe | 重释宇宙
The Hubble Space Telescope delivered the Deep Field Images. For the first time, it gives us a glimpse into the early universe. Now, the clearest images of distant faint galaxies convinced the world, with a 6.5m infrared space telescope, the very first light of the universe, came from 13.8 billion years ago, will be seen. James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the world’s most sophisticated and powerful observatory ever built by mankind, launched on December 25, 2021, has amazing results in 2022. JWST is working better than astronomy scientists had expected. Thanks to its sharp resolution and infrared spectrum, JWST have brought countless surprises to scientist. From the clearest image of the new-born stars to the deepest infrared images of the galaxies’ evolution, JWST will keep on exploring the mysteries of the universe. JWST will probably not be the ultimate space telescope, and there will be more inspiring results in the future. In the meantime, China Space Station (CSS) was completed in 2022. The Chinese Space Station Telescope, named Xuntian cabin, will be launched at the end of 2023 or 2024. The wide field of view telescope will stay away from the station, but fly in the same orbit with CSS. CSS is an orbiting scientific laboratory that will support multidisciplinary research and technology development in next 10 to 15 years. More than 1,000 investigations are planning to conduct in CSS.
2.4 m口径哈勃望远镜的深场星空图片第一次让人类瞥见了宇宙早期的景象，也使得天文学家相信6.5 m口径的红外望远镜（韦伯望远镜）可以看到138亿年前的宇宙第一缕光。这台人类历史上建造过的最复杂、探测能力最强的空间天文望远镜，于2021年圣诞节发射成功，并于2022年7月公布了首批迄今最清晰的天文科学图像。韦伯望远镜让我们看到了宇宙中遥远的暗弱星系、恒星早期形成、星系演化等细节。基于韦伯望远镜的超高分辨和红外光谱能力，我们相信韦伯望远镜将带来更多开创性的成果，帮助我们理解宇宙更深的奥秘。我们也期待更多旗舰型的空间望远镜建成投入观测。2022年中国空间站已完成建设，在未来的10-15年将支持开展多学科科学研究和技术开发验证，计划开展千余项研究项目。2023年底或2024年，巡天空间望远镜预期将实现与中国空间站的在轨伴飞。人类空间探索的步伐，正在稳步前进！
Fusion energy breakthrough
可控核聚变研究取得突破
At the end of 2022, scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory‘s National Ignition Facility (LLNL-NIF) achieved a breakthrough in nuclear fusion ignition. The experiment surpassed the fusion threshold by providing 2.05 megajoules (MJ) of energy to the target, resulting in 3.15 MJ of fusion energy output. This is a improvement on previous record in August 2021 when they got 1.3 MJ out of an input of 2.0 MJ. For the first time, researchers produced more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it. This breakthrough proves that fusion can be controlled and displayed on Earth, and provides a potential as a clean energy source in the future.
2022年底，劳伦斯利弗莫尔国家实验室国家点火设施（LLNL-NIF）的科学家，在核聚变点火方面取得突破性进展。该实验向目标靶提供2.05 MJ的能量来突破聚变阈值，进而产生3.15 MJ的聚变能量输出。这比2021年8月的先前记录有了显著提升，当时他们从2.0 MJ的输入能量中激发出1.3 MJ的输出能量。这是首次从激光驱动核聚变中产生的能量，超过了驱动它的激光能量。这一突破证明，核聚变可以在地球上实现和控制，具有成为未来清洁能源的潜力。
Fighting COVID and more
控制COVID和其他传染病
Though COVID-19 pandemic is nearing its end, it still cost a lot of lives globally in 2022. Long COVID led to the shortage of labor. Co-infection of COVID-19 and influenza A viruses poses another public health challenge in winter. Economy needs a host of stimuli to boost worldwide. Meanwhile, the monkeypox virus and Ebola revived in Africa. Dengue, malaria and yellow fever are prevalent in subtropics area. And massive measles outbreak is occurring in India. Fortunately, there are some good news for infection control. Chinese scientists verified monoclonal antibody has therapy efficacy against yellow fever virus at lethal dosage. A U.S.A. team’s Phase I clinical trial showed an HIV vaccine was safe and feasible, which induced targeted broadly neutralizing antibody in 97% subjects. Dr. Shi’s lab decoded the DNA polymerase holoenzyme structure of the monkeypox virus, which may facilitate the targeted drug development. For human, there is only one world we stand. We have to co-operate in the word to live better.
新冠肺炎疫情已接近尾声；但长期的新冠疫情导致了劳动力短缺。新冠肺炎和甲型流感病毒的共同感染给冬季的公共卫生带来了另一个挑战。全球经济需要一系列刺激措施来提升。2022年，猴痘病毒和埃博拉病毒在非洲卷土重来；登革热、疟疾和黄热病在亚热带地区流行；印度正在发生大规模麻疹疫情……幸运的是，全球感染控制方面也有一些好消息。中国科学家证实单克隆抗体在致死剂量下对黄热病病毒具有治疗效果。美国团队的一期临床试验表明，一种HIV疫苗是安全可行的，它在97%的受试者中诱导了靶向性广泛中和抗体。施博士的实验室解码了猴痘病毒的DNA聚合酶全酶结构，这有助于靶向药物的开发。我们只有一个地球！只有全球范围内广泛合作，人类才能生活得更美好！
Flexible solar cells | 柔性太阳能电池
Clean energy helps human find better ways towards sustainable development goals. Flexible perovskite solar cells, featuring high efficiency, light weight and excellent adaptability, possess great potential as power sources for spacecraft, wearable devices and IoT sensors, contributing to a more flexible, convenient and imaginative collection and utilization of solar energy. With the help of a well-designed multifunctional succinate additive, scientists from China reported a flexible perovskite solar cell with 23.6% efficiency and excellent bending durability, setting a new world record in the field of flexible perovskite solar cells. Driven by the great application scenario, the technology and industrialization of flexible perovskite solar cells will continue to flourish. The rapid rise of efficiency also makes the community wonder to what extent metrics and technology will ultimately be pushed.
清洁能源的发展将助力人类更快更好地实现可持续发展目标。柔性钙钛矿太阳能电池具有效率高、质量轻、易于赋形等特点，能帮助人类以更灵活、便捷和富有想象力的方式收集和利用太阳能，可作为航空航天器、可穿戴设备和物联网传感器的电源，具有广阔前景。中国科学家设计了一种多功能琥珀酸盐添加剂，在添加剂分子的作用下，成功实现了具有23.6%光电转换效率和优异耐弯曲性能的柔性钙钛矿太阳能电池，创下了单节柔性钙钛矿太阳能效率新的世界纪录。在巨大应用潜力的推动下，柔性钙钛矿太阳能电池技术和产业化将继续蓬勃发展。器件效率指标的飞速攀升也让人不禁畅想，在科研人员的努力下，柔性太阳能电池的性能将会达到怎样的极限？
Rebuilding Greenland by old DNA
用古环境DNA重建格陵兰岛
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to Dr. Svante Pääbo for the new discoveries concerning extinct human evolution based on the old genomes from organisms not alive in the present day. A team of multi-national scientists sequenced the oldest DNA ever found in permafrost at the northern Greenland and successfully mapped out the details of the ancient forest environment. This environmental DNA is 2 million years old, which is one million years earlier than the oldest DNA record. The genetic material comes from 41 sediment samples. Today, the place is a polar desert covered with sand dunes. Except for musk and lichen, there are almost no other creatures living here. However, in the ancient times, to everyone’s surprise, this was a temperate forest, home to a variety of animals including mastodons. These so-called environmental DNA samples come from environmental frozen sediments samples, rather than the bones or teeth of the ancient creature. Environmental DNA provides scientists with a more complete picture of the past, including everything from birds, insects to fungi.
2022年诺贝尔生理学或医学奖授予Svante Pääbo博士，以表彰他根据已不存在的生物的旧基因组，对已灭绝人类进化的新发现。一个由多国科学家组成的团队对格陵兰北部永久冻土中发现最古老的DNA进行了测序，并成功绘制出古代森林环境的细节。这个环境DNA有200万年历史，比最古老的DNA记录早了100万年。遗传物质来自41个沉积物样本。今天，这里是一片被沙丘覆盖的极地沙漠，除了发出麝香味的植物和地衣，几乎没有其他生物。然而，令所有人惊讶的是，在古代，这是一片生活着乳齿象等动物的温带森林。这些所谓的环境DNA样本来自环境冷冻沉积物样本，而不是古生物的骨骼或牙齿。环境DNA为科学家提供了从鸟类、昆虫到真菌完整的过去图景。
Breakthrough in AI Chatbot
智能聊天机器人的新突破
Artificial intelligence is widely used in a variety of intelligent application fields. Natural language processing (NLP), which aims to intelligently analyze and understand human language, is one of the core application fields in artificial intelligence. With the advances in artificial intelligence, especially NLP, intelligent chatbot has made significant progress in 2022. In late November, the well-known AI technology company, OpenAI, released a new chatbot named ChatGPT, which is based on new version of Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT). It attracted over one million users in only 5 days. A number of chat records from ChatGPT quickly appeared on social media, covering almost all topics, and many users were surprised by the capabilities of this chatbot. ChatGPT not only has extremely powerful dialogue and question answering abilities, but is also an “all-around player”. It can also write codes, papers, poetry, and even take exams. Elon Musk commented on Twitter, “ChatGPT is scary good. We are not far from dangerously strong AI”. Researchers believe that the intelligent chatbots represented by ChatGPT may be able to subvert the current search engines.
人工智能被广泛应用于多个领域。自然语言处理，其目标是对人类语言进行智能分析和理解。随着人工智能，特别是自然语言处理技术的发展，智能聊天机器人在2022年取得了重大进展。11月底，知名AI科技公司OpenAI发布了基于语言预训练技术的、全新的聊天机器人ChatGPT。它在5天内吸引了超过100万用户。社交媒体上迅速出现了大量ChatGPT的聊天记录，几乎涵盖了所有话题，许多用户都对这款聊天机器人的能力感到惊讶。ChatGPT不仅有着极其强大的对话与问答能力，还是一个“全能选手”。它也可以写代码，写论文，写诗歌，甚至可以参加考试。埃隆·马斯克在推特上评价到，“ChatGPT强到可怕。我们距离危险而强大的人工智能不远了”。研究者认为，以ChatGPT为代表的智能聊天机器人，或许可以颠覆目前的搜索引擎。
First pig-to-human heart transplant
猪心异种移植
The world’s first pig-to-human heart was successfully transplanted into a 57-year-old man on January 7, 2022. This historic xenotransplantation overcame the largest possible obstacle caused by hyperacute immune rejection and achieved good short-term results. However, the patient’s condition began deteriorating, and he died two months after the transplantation. The preclinical studies of xenotransplantation have been carried out for a long time. However, a poor understanding of xenotransplantation and a lack of effective immunosuppression strategies eventually led to failure. Genetic engineering seems to provide a pragmatic solution for the puzzling problem. The removal of xenoantigens by gene manipulation is an important approach to reduce human immune rejection response. In addition to transplantation technology, problems such as immune rejection, transmission of heterogeneous pathogens, and medical ethics also need to be solved. Generally speaking, scientists believe that pig organs are the best source of human xenotransplantation to eliminate the crisis of organ shortage. However, the long-term results are still unknown and whether these attempts can achieve great success in xenotransplantation remains to be seen.
2022年1月7日，全球首例转基因猪心脏成功移植到一名57岁的男子体内。这一历史性手术克服了超急性免疫排斥反应可能造成的术后障碍，并取得了良好的短期效果。虽然患者在术后两个月死亡，但该手术仍然是异种移植史上的里程碑事件。异种器官移植的临床前研究已经有很长的历史，由于经验不足，以及缺乏有效的免疫抑制策略，很多试验都以失败告终。基因技术为异种移植带来了新的希望。通过基因技术去除异种抗原是减少人类免疫排斥反应的重要方法。除了移植技术难题，我们还需要解决免疫排斥、异质病原体传播以及医学伦理等问题。基于各种原因，目前科学家们普遍认为，猪器官是可用来消除人类器官短缺危机的最佳来源。随着基因技术的发展，消除宿主排斥现象的关键技术将迎来新的重大突破。我们期待未来有更多的改进，能够在异种移植领域中取得巨大成功。
Harvesting hydrogen from seawater
从海水获取氢气
Hydrogen energy is seen as a promising energy form with multiple advantages, such as high energy density, zero pollution, and rich reserves in seawater. However, its application remains a serious challenge due to low durability, caused by the electrode side reactions and corrosion issues arising from the complex components of seawater. In November 2022, scientists from China proposed a new framework integrating in-situ water purification treatment with seawater electrolysis, and successfully achieved a direct method for hydrogen production that completely solves the side-reaction and corrosion problems. The authors claimed that the demo system was successfully run with a high work efficiency for over 3,200 hours under real conditions. This breakthrough realized a high-efficiency, low-cost and large-scale industrialization of direct seawater electrolysis, and paved the way for the future application.
氢能具有多种优势，如高能量密度、零污染和丰富的海水储量，被认为是一种有前途的能源形式。然而，由于电极副反应、海水复杂成分引起的腐蚀问题和耐久性低，氢能应用仍是一个重大挑战。2022年11月，中国科学家提出了一种将原位水净化处理与海水电解相结合的新方案，并成功实现了一种完全解决副反应和腐蚀问题的直接制氢方法。演示系统成功运行且高效工作达3200多小时。这一突破将实现海水直接电解的高效、低成本和大规模工业化，为未来海水制氢的应用铺平了道路。
Cancer nested in fungi
癌细胞内有真菌感染
Cancer is complicated and both virus and bacteria are involved in different cancers. Does cancer cell also harbor fungus? Scientists from United States and Israel reported in the journal Cell that they had found fungi in 35 tumor tissues from 17,401 patient tissues. Through pan-cancer analyses, these authors found fungi were usually detected intracellular, and they estimated that cancer-associated fungal was at up to one fungal cell per 10,000 cancer cells. Furthermore, some tumors are associated with specific mycobiota. For example, gastrointestinal cancers link to Candida. And intracellular fungi can be also used to stratify clinical outcome. These descriptive studies also revealed strong association between mycobiota and cancer pathogenesis. It has opened up a new window for cancer research, enabling scientists to seek answers to questions like if specific fungi lurking in cancer promote tumor growth? What the underlying mechanisms are? More research is needed to probe into the carcinogenesis.
200多年癌症研究的历史中，科学家们发现了某些病毒或细菌是某种癌症发生发展的必要条件。癌症还会有真菌感染吗？通过泛癌基因组学研究，美国和以色列的科学家从17000多例癌症患者的35类癌症样本中发现了真菌！平均1万个癌细胞中有一个存在真菌感染；它们通常存在于癌细胞内部。而且，一些癌症与特定的真菌群有关。例如，胃肠道癌与念珠菌感染有关。此外，癌细胞内真菌感染也可用于对临床结果进行分层。这些研究揭示了真菌群落与癌症发病机制之间的密切联系。它为癌症研究开辟了一个新的窗口：癌症中潜伏的特定真菌是否会促进肿瘤生长？基本机制是什么？要回答这些问题，未来需要更多细致的研究。
Detecting underground water on Mars
火星上有水吗？
The detection of underground water is a major task in Mars exploration, especially at mid-low lattitudes. However, the depth of watertable -- or even whether water exists or not -- remains unknown. China’s Zhurong rover performed the first ground penetrating radar survey in the southern marginal area of Utopia Planitia of Mars, which was considered to be one of the best places to look for underground water according to previous research. A study led by the scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences presents the first high-resolution subsurface image from the rover’s radar data, showing a multi-layered structure above 80 m in the area. This image presents two sets of fining-upward sequences below the several-meters-thick regolith, reflecting the occurrence of episodic water-involved activities over the past 3.5 to 3.2 billion years. No direct evidence of liquid water was found within 80 meters below the surface, but the researchers said that the possibility for saline ice to exist could not be ruled out. The study provides an important observational basis for understanding the geological evolution, environment and climate change on Mars.
火星地下水是火星探测的重要目标之一，特别是在中低纬度地区，地下水是否存在以及地下水的埋深仍然是未知的。祝融火星车在火星乌托邦平原南部进行了首次探地雷达探测，根据以往的研究结果，该地区是火星中低纬度探测地下水的最佳地点之一。低频雷达通道的最大穿透深度可达80 m，结果显示：在几米厚的风化层下方存在两组向上变细的层序，反映了过去35-32亿年与水活动相关的幕式沉积过程。在80 m范围内没有发现液态水存在的证据，但不排除存在盐水的可能性。这项研究为了解火星的地质演化、环境和气候变化提供了重要的观测基础。
原文信息
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本文内容来自Cell Press合作期刊The Innovation第四卷第一期以Editorial发表的“Innovation Focus in 2022” (投稿: 2022-12-27；接收: 2022-12-30；在线刊出: 2023-01-04)。
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xinn.2022.100371
原文链接：https://www.cell.com/the-innovation/fulltext/S2666-6758(22)00167-9
引用格式：The Innovation Editorial Team. (2022). Innovation Focus in 2022. The Innovation. 4(1),100371.
致 谢
感谢以下老师的帮助：李正阳、张伟、钱森、张金海、汪巍、王春雷、易陈谊、王飞、曹鑫、陈科。
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