Could the background circulation of the record-breaking rainfall in July 2021 in east-central China have been predicted?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: TOWARDS THE GOAL OF UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMIC, THERMODYNAMIC, MICROPHYSICAL, AND LAND SURFACE AND BOUNDARY LAYER PROCESSES AND CONDITIONS LEADING TO THE JULY 2021 ZHENGZHOU, HENAN EXTREME RAINFALL EVENT, AND TO UNDERSTAND THE LARGE-SCALE INFLUENCE AND CONTROL ON THE REGIONAL PROCESSES, A SPECIAL COLLECTION OF SIX ARTICLES THAT INVESTIGATE SOME OF THE ABOVE QUESTIONS ARE PUBLISHED IN THIS ISSUE. view more 

CREDIT: ADVANCES IN ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES

In July 2021, unprecedented heavy rainfall occurred in Zhengzhou (east-central China) against a background of a northward shift in the western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH), which is a key atmospheric circulation system affecting the East Asian summer climate. Due to complex air–sea–land interactions, the WPSH exhibits significant interannual to interdecadal variability, which poses a grand challenge to skillfully predicting the climate. In this context, the predictability of the anomalous WPSH in July 2021 remains unknown and deserves careful study.

Recently, in a paper published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, scientists from the State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (LASG), Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, have revealed both the predictable and unpredictable components of the anomalous WPSH in July 2021 based on large ensemble hindcast experiments using the IAP/LASG ocean–atmosphere coupled model.

“The observed northward shift of the WPSH in July 2021 exhibits a meridional dipole pattern in the 850-hPa geopotential height over the eastern China sea, and the amplitude of geopotential height was the strongest since 1979,” explains Dr Shuai Hu, the lead author of the study. “This meridional dipole pattern corresponds to the two nodes of the so-called Pacific–Japan pattern.”

To reveal the predictability of the anomalous WPSH, Hu and colleagues conducted a 21-member ensemble of seasonal predictions initiated from the end of June 2021. Both the predictable and the unpredictable components of the meridional dipole pattern were identified from the ensemble simulations. The predictable component was driven by positive precipitation anomalies over the tropical western Pacific, which were caused by a positive horizonal advection of the mean moist enthalpy associated with southwesterly anomalies to the northwestern flank of anticyclonic anomalies, which was excited by the La Niña. The unpredictable component was associated with the atmospheric internal intraseasonal oscillations, which were not initialized in the predictions. The relative contributions of the predictable and unpredictable components to the observed northward shift of the WPSH at 850 hPa were 28.0% and 72.0%, respectively.

“Our study calls for attention to be paid to the intraseasonal variability of the WPSH in seasonal predictions. An accurate prediction of the intraseasonal variability is of high priority in efforts devoted to improving the prediction skill for the East Asian summer climate,” says Prof. Tianjun Zhou, corresponding author of the study.

The study is published in a Special Collection on the July 2021 Zhengzhou, Henan Extreme Rainfall Event.

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JOURNAL

Advances in Atmospheric Sciences

DOI

10.1007/s00376-022-2151-x 

ARTICLE TITLE

Seasonal Prediction of the Record-Breaking Northward Shift of the Western Pacific Subtropical High in July 2021

The strong Meiyu in history, beginning with the flood of 1608

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

 

IMAGE: SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE ANOMALY OF THE EASTERN CHINA TOTAL SUMMER RAINFALL RELATIVE TO THE AVERAGE FROM 1470 TO 1850 IN IGGPRE (A) AND RAP (B) RECONSTRUCTION DATA (UNIT: MM). THE BLACK BOX REPRESENTS THE STUDY AREA. view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

This study is led by Dr. Liang Ning (School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University) and graduate student Liulin Wang (School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University). They have found that interdecadal variability of solar radiation had impact on the strong Meiyu event.

The 1608 flood was very severe and had a certain degree of disintegration of the ruling status of the Ming Dynasty in historical records. Therefore, the team chose this flood as the entry point of this study. And they found that Meiyu played an important role in the formation of flood in the Middle and Lower Reaches of the Yangtze River (MLRYR).

Then, the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1470–1850) were divided into three periods of strong solar radiation and three periods of weak solar radiation. It was found that during the periods of strong solar radiation, the frequency of strong Meiyu events was significantly higher than that during the periods of weak solar radiation in the reconstructed precipitation data and model simulations. This was related to the stronger Western Pacific Subtropical High and the stronger blocking high in middle-high latitude during the period of strong solar radiation.

See the article:

Wang L, Ning L, Chen K, Yan M, Liu J, Liu Z, Qin Y, Xue J, Li C. 2023. Influence and mechanism of solar radiation intensity on the interdecadal variability of strong Meiyu events during historical periods. Science China Earth Sciences, 66(2): 408–416, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-021-9952-0

https://www.sciengine.com/SCES/doi/10.1007/s11430-021-9952-0

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JOURNAL

Science China Earth Sciences

DOI

10.1007/s11430-021-9952-0 

Time series of summer precipitation anomalies in the MLRYR reconstructed from IGGPRE (a) and RAP (b) data from 1470 to 1850, and time series (c) of total solar radiation flux in summer. 

The abscissa of the red dashed line is 1608, the yellow shading represents the period of weak solar radiation, the purple shading represents the period of strong solar radiation, and the gray dashed line is the plus or minus two standard deviation line of each precipitation sequence.

Summer (JJA) geopotential height (unit: gpm) and wind anomaly spatial pattern (unit: m•s－1) at 500 hPa.  

(a), (d) Strong solar radiation period; (b), (e) weak solar radiation period; (c), (f) difference spatial pattern between strong and weak solar radiation periods. The vector represents the wind spatial pattern, the shading area is the anomaly value of the geopotential height at 500 hPa, and the dotted area represents the area where the 500 hPa geopotential height spatial pattern difference has passed the 90% significance test. The data used in ((a)–(c)) is the CESM-LME AF experimental data, and ((d)–(f))) is the CESM-LME SSI experimental data.

CREDIT

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

Intelligent metasurface robotics could provide robot with the God’s eye view in the human-robot alliance

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

 

IMAGE: (A) SYSTEM LEVEL OVERVIEW. THE PIVOTAL HARDWARE INGREDIENT IS A PROGRAMMABLE METASURFACE WHICH IS CONTROLLED BY A SET OF INTELLIGENT ALGORITHMS, ENSURING A ROBUST AND STABLE WIRELESS CONNECTION BETWEEN THE ROBOTIC BRAIN AND MULTIPLE ROBOTIC LIMBS. (B) FOUR SELECTED SNAPSHOTS OF HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION RESULTS IN INDOOR ENVIRONMENT, WHERE THE I2MR SEE THE HUMAN. THERE IS A 60CM-THICK CONCRETE WALL BETWEEN THE ROOMS AND THE CORRIDOR. (C) ANALYSIS OF THE POWER CONSUMPTION ON THE ROBOT’S LIMB. view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

This study is led by Professor Lianlin Li (Peking University, China), Professor Tie Jun Cui (Southeast University, China) and Professor Philipp del Hougne (Rennes University, France). Intelligent robotics will become one of the core technologies in people daily lives of future smart societies. The team proposed the concept of intelligent indoor metasurface robotics, in which all sensing and computing are relegated to a centralized robotic brain endowed with the God’s eye, I2MR’s limbs (e.g. motorized vehicles and airborne drones) merely execute the wirelessly received instructions from the brain, and a secure wireless communication modality is utilized establish a preferential high-capacity wireless link between the I2MR’s brain and limbs.

“Despite the significant progress of intelligent robotics with different forms and characteristics in a wide range of applications, there are still challenges and opportunities to be addressed before the robots can see and understand a complex context to help humans in a future human-robot alliance. The challenges include but are not limited: 1) visual sensors embedded in robots have a limited field of view and can usually only operate in the line of sight, making them unsuitable for the acquisition of context awareness; 2) the visual sensors cannot operate in darkness and may be sensitive to skin colour; 3) by yielding human-interpretable data, the visual sensors tend to infringe humans’ privacy; 4) operating such sensors on the robotic edge can severely limit the cruise time of battery-powered mobile robots due to the power-hungry data acquisition and processing; and 5) the acceptable payload of mobile robots, especially airborne drones, is limited.” Li says.

The team sought to resolve above challenges by integrating the intelligent metasurface into robot. “The I2MR’s key is the centralized usage of an intelligent metasurface, which is capable of realizing low-latency and high-resolution three-dimensional imaging of humans, even beyond the line of sight (e.g. around corners and behind thick concrete walls), and thus I2MR is endowed with real-time and full-context awareness of its operating indoor environment. Thereby, the difficulties of sensing and computing arising in the conventional robotics could be fundamentally resolved.” Cui says.

The team implemented a proof-of-principle demonstration at around 2.4 GHz for the purpose of health-care assistance to a human inhabitant. In their implementation, the robot’s brain performs a complex sequence of sensing tasks to locate its mobile robotic limb as well as the human, and to recognize the human’s posture. The brain then implements a high-capacity communication link with the robotic limb and transmits the instructions. “The strategy could be extended to other frequencies and beyond for developing more intelligent robotics with more advanced functionalities” Li says.

The intelligent metasurfcace robot could open a new avenue for the conception of smart and wirelessly networked indoor robotics. The I2MR can be transposed to further important application areas of wirelessly networked robotic entities, such as the development of 6G wireless communications, green IoT, and digital twinning. “The intelligent metasurface robotic could be an emerging research direction involving various disciplines, and there are a lot of open questions to be carefully addressed in the future.” Li says.

###

See the article:

Intelligent indoor metasurface robotics

https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwac266

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JOURNAL

National Science Review

DOI

10.1093/nsr/nwac266 

MAD SCIENTISTS INC.

Will future computers run on human brain cells?

Johns Hopkins researchers break ground on new field of ‘organoid intelligence’

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THOMAS HARTUNG WITH BRAIN ORGANOIDS IN HIS LAB AT THE JOHNS HOPKINS BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH view more 

CREDIT: WILL KIRK/JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

A “biocomputer” powered by human brain cells could be developed within our lifetime, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers who expect such technology to exponentially expand the capabilities of modern computing and create novel fields of study.

The team outlines their plan for “organoid intelligence” today in the journal Frontiers in Science.

“Computing and artificial intelligence have been driving the technology revolution but they are reaching a ceiling,” said Thomas Hartung, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Whiting School of Engineering who is spearheading the work. “Biocomputing is an enormous effort of compacting computational power and increasing its efficiency to push past our current technological limits.”

For nearly two decades scientists have used tiny organoids, lab-grown tissue resembling fully grown organs, to experiment on kidneys, lungs, and other organs without resorting to human or animal testing. More recently Hartung and colleagues at Johns Hopkins have been working with brain organoids, orbs the size of a pen dot with neurons and other features that promise to sustain basic functions like learning and remembering.

“This opens up research on how the human brain works,” Hartung said. “Because you can start manipulating the system, doing things you cannot ethically do with human brains.”

Hartung began to grow and assemble brain cells into functional organoids in 2012 using cells from human skin samples reprogrammed into an embryonic stem cell-like state. Each organoid contains about 50,000 cells, about the size of a fruit fly’s nervous system. He now envisions building a futuristic computer with such brain organoids.

Computers that run on this “biological hardware” could in the next decade begin to alleviate energy-consumption demands of supercomputing that are becoming increasingly unsustainable, Hartung said. Even though computers process calculations involving numbers and data faster than humans, brains are much smarter in making complex logical decisions, like telling a dog from a cat.

“The brain is still unmatched by modern computers,” Hartung said. “Frontier, the latest supercomputer in Kentucky, is a $600 million, 6,800-square-feet installation. Only in June of last year, it exceeded for the first time the computational capacity of a single human brain — but using a million times more energy.”

It might take decades before organoid intelligence can power a system as smart as a mouse, Hartung said. But by scaling up production of brain organoids and training them with artificial intelligence, he foresees a future where biocomputers support superior computing speed, processing power, data efficiency, and storage capabilities.

“It will take decades before we achieve the goal of something comparable to any type of computer,” Hartung said. “But if we don't start creating funding programs for this, it will be much more difficult.”

Organoid intelligence could also revolutionize drug testing research for neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodegeneration, said Lena Smirnova, a Johns Hopkins assistant professor of environmental health and engineering who co-leads the investigations.

“We want to compare brain organoids from typically developed donors versus brain organoids from donors with autism,” Smirnova said. “The tools we are developing towards biological computing are the same tools that will allow us to understand changes in neuronal networks specific for autism, without having to use animals or to access patients, so we can understand the underlying mechanisms of why patients have these cognition issues and impairments.”

To assess the ethical implications of working with organoid intelligence, a diverse consortium of scientists, bioethicists, and members of the public have been embedded within the team.

Johns Hopkins authors included: Brian S. Caffo, David H. Gracias, Qi Huang, Itzy E. Morales Pantoja, Bohao Tang, Donald J. Zack, Cynthia A. Berlinicke, J. Lomax Boyd, Timothy DHarris, Erik C. Johnson, Jeffrey Kahn, Barton L. Paulhamus, Jesse Plotkin, Alexander S. Szalay, Joshua T. Vogelstein, and Paul F. Worley.

Other authors included: Brett J. Kagan, of Cortical Labs; Alysson R. Muotri, of the University of California San Diego; and Jens C. Schwamborn of University of Luxembourg.

IMAGES: Top: Thomas Hartung with brain organoids in his lab at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Credit: Will Kirk/Johns Hopkins University. Bottom: A close-up of a brain organoid. Credit: Jesse Plotkin/Johns Hopkins University. High resolution images available.

Magnified image of a brain organoid produced in Thomas Hartung’s lab, dyed to show neurons in magenta, cell nuclei in blue, and other supporting cells in red and green.

CREDIT

Jesse Plotkin/Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University news releases are available online, as is information for reporters. To arrange an interview with a Johns Hopkins expert, contact a media representative listed above. Find more Johns Hopkins experts on the Experts Hub, and more Johns Hopkins stories on the Hub.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Science

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Human tissue samples

ARTICLE TITLE

Organoid intelligence: a new biocomputing frontier

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Feb-2023

Scientists unveil plan to create 

biocomputers powered by human 

brain cells

Despite AI’s impressive track record, its computational power pales in comparison with a human brain. Now, scientists unveil a revolutionary path to drive computing forward: organoid intelligence, where lab-grown brain organoids act as biological hardware

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FRONTIERS

 

IMAGE: INFOGRAPHIC: ORGANOID INTELLIGENCE: THE NEW FRONTIER IN BIOCOMPUTING view more 

CREDIT: FRONTIERS/JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been inspired by the human brain. This approach proved highly successful: AI boasts impressive achievements – from diagnosing medical conditions to composing poetry. Still, the original model continues to outperform machines in many ways. This is why, for example, we can ‘prove our humanity’ with trivial image tests online. What if instead of trying to make AI more brain-like, we went straight to the source? 

Scientists across multiple disciplines are working to create revolutionary biocomputers where three-dimensional cultures of brain cells, called brain organoids, serve as biological hardware. They describe their roadmap for realizing this vision in the journal Frontiers in Science.  

“We call this new interdisciplinary field ‘organoid intelligence’ (OI),” said Prof Thomas Hartung of Johns Hopkins University. “A community of top scientists has gathered to develop this technology, which we believe will launch a new era of fast, powerful, and efficient biocomputing.”   

What are brain organoids, and why would they make good computers?  

Brain organoids are a type of lab-grown cell-culture. Even though brain organoids aren’t ‘mini brains’, they share key aspects of brain function and structure such as neurons and other brain cells that are essential for cognitive functions like learning and memory. Also, whereas most cell cultures are flat, organoids have a three-dimensional structure. This increases the culture's cell density 1,000-fold, meaning that neurons can form many more connections.   

But even if brain organoids are a good imitation of brains, why would they make good computers? After all, aren't computers smarter and faster than brains?  

"While silicon-based computers are certainly better with numbers, brains are better at learning,” Hartung explained. “For example, AlphaGo [the AI that beat the world’s number one Go player in 2017] was trained on data from 160,000 games. A person would have to play five hours a day for more than 175 years to experience these many games.”  

Brains are not only superior learners, they are also more energy efficient. For instance, the amount of energy spent training AlphaGo is more than is needed to sustain an active adult for a decade. 

“Brains also have an amazing capacity to store information, estimated at 2,500TB,” Hartung added. “We’re reaching the physical limits of silicon computers because we cannot pack more transistors into a tiny chip. But the brain is wired completely differently. It has about 100bn neurons linked through over 1015 connection points. It’s an enormous power difference compared to our current technology.” 

What would organoid intelligence bio computers look like? 

According to Hartung, current brain organoids need to be scaled-up for OI. "They are too small, each containing about 50,000 cells. For OI, we would need to increase this number to 10 million,” he explained. 

In parallel, the authors are also developing technologies to communicate with the organoids: in other words, to send them information and read out what they’re ‘thinking’. The authors plan to adapt tools from various scientific disciplines, such as bioengineering and machine learning, as well as engineer new stimulation and recording devices.  

“We developed a brain-computer interface device that is a kind of an EEG cap for organoids, which we presented in an article published last August. It is a flexible shell that is densely covered with tiny electrodes that can both pick up signals from the organoid, and transmit signals to it,” said Hartung.  

The authors envision that eventually OI would integrate a wide range of stimulation and recording tools. These will orchestrate interactions across networks of interconnected organoids that implement more complex computations.  

Organoid intelligence could help prevent and treat neurological conditions 

OI’s promise goes beyond computing and into medicine. Thanks to a groundbreaking technique developed by Noble Laureates John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka, brain organoids can be produced from adult tissues. This means that scientists can develop personalized brain organoids from skin samples of patients suffering from neural disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease. They can then run multiple tests to investigate how genetic factors, medicines, and toxins influence these conditions. 

“With OI, we could study the cognitive aspects of neurological conditions as well,” Hartung said. “For example, we could compare memory formation in organoids derived from healthy people and from Alzheimer’s patients, and try to repair relative deficits. We could also use OI to test whether certain substances, such as pesticides, cause memory or learning problems.” 

Taking ethical considerations into account 

Creating human brain organoids that can learn, remember, and interact with their environment raises complex ethical questions. For example, could they develop consciousness, even in a rudimentary form? Could they experience pain or suffering? And what rights would people have concerning brain organoids made from their cells?   

The authors are acutely aware of these issues. “A key part of our vision is to develop OI in an ethical and socially responsible manner,” Hartung said. “For this reason, we have partnered with ethicists from the very beginning to establish an ‘embedded ethics’ approach. All ethical issues will be continuously assessed by teams made up of scientists, ethicists, and the public, as the research evolves.” 

How far are we from the first organoid intelligence? 

Even though OI is still in its infancy, a recently-published study by one of the article’s co-authors – Dr Brett Kagan of the Cortical Labs – provides proof of concept. His team showed that a normal, flat brain cell culture can learn to play the video game Pong.  

“Their team is already testing this with brain organoids,” Hartung added. “And I would say that replicating this experiment with organoids already fulfills the basic definition of OI. From here on, it’s just a matter of building the community, the tools, and the technologies to realize OI’s full potential,” he concluded.   

 

A magnified image of a lab-grown brain organoid with fluorescent labeling for different cell types. (Pink - neurons; red - oligodendrocytes; green - astrocytes; blue - all cell nuclei)

CREDIT

Thomas Hartung, Johns Hopkins University

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Science

DOI

10.3389/fsci.2023.1017235 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Lab-produced tissue samples

ARTICLE TITLE

The new frontier in biocomputing and intelligence in-a-dish

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Feb-2023

COI STATEMENT

The authors declare a potential conflict of interest and state it below: T.H. is named inventor on a patent by Johns Hopkins University on the production of brain organoids, which is licensed to AxoSim,New Orleans, LA, USA, and receives royalty shares. T.H. and L.S. consult AxoSim. J.C.S. is named inventor on a patent by the University of Luxembourg on the production of midbrain organoids, which is licensed to OrganoTherapeutics SARL, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg. J.C.S is also co-founder and shareholder of OrganoTherapeutics SARL. A.R.M. is a co-founder and has equity interest in TISMOO, a company dedicated to genetic analysis and human brain organogenesis, focusing on therapeutic applications customized for autism spectrum disorders and other neurological disorders origin genetics. The terms of this arrangement have been reviewed and approved by the University of California, San Diego, in accordance with its conflict of interest policies. B.J.K. is an inventor on patents for technology related this paper along with being employed and holding shares in Cortical Labs Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia. No specific funding or other incentives were provided for involvement in this publication.

THE NEGATION OF THE NEGATION

From anti-antibiotics to extinction therapy: how evolutionary thinking can transform medicine

An article published in Frontiers in Science demonstrates how applying an evolutionary perspective to medicine can inspire new ways of preventing and treating disease

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FRONTIERS

 

IMAGE: INFOGRAPHIC: EVOLUTIONARY MEDICINE CAN TRANSFORM BIOMEDICINE AND PUBLIC HEALTH view more 

CREDIT: NATTERSON-HOROWITZ ET AL.

The word ‘evolution’ may bring to mind dusty dinosaur bones, but it impacts our health every day. For example, even though antibiotics were invented only a century ago, the evolution of antibiotic resistance is already a major concern. The rise in modern health problems such as obesity can also be traced back to evolutionary principles.   

An article published in Frontiers in Science demonstrates how applying an evolutionary perspective to medicine can inspire new ways of preventing and treating disease.  

“Evolutionary medicine holds promise to transform our understanding of why we get sick and strengthen our ability to protect human health,” said Dr Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, a cardiologist and evolutionary biologist on the faculty of Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles. “We came together with experts across many fields to create an overarching research agenda for extending the field.” 

“Our aim is to drive new biomedical innovations and effective public health measures, for everything from infectious disease and pandemics to cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease,” said Prof Daniel Blumstein of the University of California, Los Angeles.  

Overcoming chemotherapy and antibiotic resistance 

Drug resistance is a global health threat in urgent need of solutions. Since bacteria and cancer cells naturally adapt to survive medications, new drug-resistant variants emerge constantly. This problem is currently addressed by continuously producing new antibiotics and cancer chemotherapies – a temporary and costly solution.   

Evolutionary-inspired strategies could break this cycle. For example, ‘anti-evolution’ drugs could stop bacteria from sharing resistance genes with each other. ‘Anti-antibiotics’ are another innovative strategy that could stave off many hospital-acquired antibiotic-resistant infections. These infections often occur when antibiotics administered to the bloodstream reach harmless bacteria in the gut, causing antibiotic-resistant strains to evolve and spread. Oral anti-antibiotics that block these drugs in the gut could prevent this. 

In the case of cancer, a branch of evolution called extinction biology could help tackle chemotherapy resistance. “The idea is that an effective way to eradicate a population is to first critically reduce its size with an ecological catastrophe – like the meteor strike for the dinosaurs,” explained Blumstein. “And then kill remaining individuals with a second disaster – like the famine that followed the meteor.” 

Extinction therapy translates these principles into a clinical strategy. Patients would receive a high dose of one cancer drug to reduce the tumor size, as in current protocols. But before drug resistance has a chance to arise, the first treatment would be replaced by another to kill off the remaining cancer cells. 

Using biodiversity to drive biomedical innovation 

The authors highlight that many new therapeutic strategies may be hidden in plain sight, among the biodiversity of the natural world. 

“Giraffes have the highest blood pressure of any animal, and yet they don’t suffer from the organ damage that hypertension causes in people. And elephants and Tasmanian devils rarely get cancer,” said Natterson-Horowitz. “What is the biology that protects these animals from diseases that kill us? Extraordinarily powerful insights are out there that we haven’t tapped into yet.” 

The authors call for a systematic mapping of disease vulnerability and resistance mechanisms in nature: “Creating this database could, within a decade, help identify unique traits and ultimately lead to novel clinical treatments,” said Blumstein.  

Improving public health measures 

Evolutionary principles could also guide more effective public health policies. “Our bodies and minds evolved in one environment but are living in another – and that causes disease,” said Natterson-Horowitz. “Cardiovascular disease, low fertility, and other common ‘modern’ conditions all result from this evolutionary mismatch.”  

These conditions are often treated as ‘lifestyle’ diseases with interventions that place the responsibility fully on the individual, such as exercise and dietary changes. However, this approach of changing health behaviors doesn’t always work. The authors argue that evolutionary-based public health policies would focus on improving ecological conditions instead.  

“It’s not about treating diabetes when a person gets it at 40, but about making the investment during childhood. Policies that promote interventions early in life can have an immensely positive effect on future health and welfare,” Blumstein added. 

An evolutionary-inspired roadmap for better health 

Evolutionary perspectives are already making their way into the public and political agenda. Some countries have restricted antibiotics use and introduced taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages. However, the authors emphasize that realizing the full potential of evolutionary medicine requires greater investment and interdisciplinary collaboration.  

“Evolutionary insights have tremendous – and as yet unrealized – potential to better understand, prevent, and treat existing and emerging threats to human, animal, and planetary health. Our article provides a roadmap for basic biological and biomedical research as well as the development of innovative biomedicines and more effective public health measures,” the authors concluded.     

Infographic: Evolutionary diversity can inspire biomedical innovation

Infographic: Evolutionary medicine strategies can stem drug resistance

Infographic: Evolutionary medicine can stem the rise in 'modern' health issues

CREDIT

Natterson-Horowitz et al.

JOURNAL

Frontiers in Science

DOI

10.3389/fsci.2023.997136 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Systematic review

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The future of evolutionary medicine: sparking innovation in biomedicine and public health

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Feb-2023

COI STATEMENT

PT is co-founder of Felix Biotechnology Inc, and declares a financial interest in this company that seeks to commercially develop phages for use as therapeutics. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest