2024: On the verge of paradigm shifts for Biotechnology

2024 ended with the unexpected promise of open access to scientific literature– now available only after a significant expenditure not all can afford, particularly in the Global South. It remains to be demonstrated that access to information translates into innovation. Indeed, access to specialized information is a considerable development, but it does not solve the main issues related to the extreme gap observed in biotechnological achievements between North and South. Coincidentally, 2024 was an acrimonious year in terms of inefficient international joint efforts to tackle our many problems, with plenty of politics and almost no science on the table. May access to knowledge become wisdom.

AI contributed during the year 2024 not only to advance in the prediction of protein structures solely based on linear sequences and improved comparison methods but also in unveiling protein interactions with different ligands, opening the door for more sophisticated use of the approach, like the engineering (or even creation) of unseen transduction pathways. AI-assisted, directed cooptation was widely used to solve biological problems of different natures. On the other hand, hormones linked to engineered conjugates controlling their release represented a significant step toward intelligent dose-dependent therapies. They exemplified how AI and other approaches try to mimic life as the smartest route to efficiency and reliability in implementing differing biosolutions.

In 2024, the scientific community also offered the soon release of the complete Atlas of Human Cells, which per se signifies massive support for the ever-growing field of tissue engineering. Besides, the augmented knowledge of cell types will allow us to better understand human physiology and morphogenetic processes equally, including those related to the early application of genetic interventions to prevent or ameliorate the consequences of innate errors in metabolism and development. Hopefully for good, the betterment of living multicellular organisms is only one step away.  

The successful direct use and delivery of mRNA as a therapeutical agent in 2024 demonstrated the feasibility of using this molecule to advance biotechnological protocols beyond antiviral vaccines and promises to become the strongest ally of smart solutions when combined with the development of finely tuned edited organisms. The latter will surely arise from the conscious application of the superbly advanced edition tools developed in 2024. To complete this promising scenario, the antimalarial transmissible vaccine developed and used later this year demonstrates that the design and implementation of transmissible therapies are closer than ever.

A concerned yet open approach to microbiome engineering must be called upon. Not to renounce its many benefits but to monitor the effects of its percolation to the general public that resort to a permanently growing offer of "probiotics"– as supplemented food and miscellanea goods, with poor scientific evidence supporting it. More than ever, scientific knowledge can be used to promote the adoption of easy but effective solutions never proved before, using evolutionary friends like bacteria and phages. We need to create policies aimed at easing while controlling the use of this specific knowledge that, so far, has been exploited only for financial gains by the food and pharmaceutical industries despite the enormous gains governments could get access to just by improving the health of entire populations with easy microbiome-based interventions.

Finally, biodiversity conservation has become a valuable tool of crowdfunding at the highest levels, with governments as the leading providers of financial resources to all: the private sector feeding on a green narrative to gain some points while washing face, the public sector committed to making everybody else responsible for the biodiversity debacle but themselves, and the self-perceived victims of biodiversity loss which this year obtained recognition and the promise of more resources that are not precisely directed to the preservation of biological richness. At the same time, contrastingly, private entrepreneurs continue advancing in the science of de-extinction and adding the preservation of genetic variability to their corporate portfolio. Briefly, action on biodiversity preservation creates more opportunities to do politics instead of increasing the chance to tackle the loss of species and entire ecosystems. Biotechnological means and tools have been and are being developed to understand biodiversity better and how to preserve it efficiently. Yet, we are still dragging under the poorly defined paradigm of benefits fair-sharing. However, there is still some hope regarding science's proven effectiveness when it thoughtfully provides timely alternatives.

2024 gave us a new vision of species, cells, and tissue diversity as never before, along with the tools to make changes to their genetic makeup and understand how genome dynamics would allow the creation of never-seen-before individuals just by playing the cards of the same deck differently. Advances in biotechnology are imposing changes in our vision of the world and on how this knowledge can be used to amass the willpower required to benefit all. Let us not be surprised if 2025 biotechnological advances make us question our biological nature and value and challenge our ethical vision of a world in which the bleak 2024 surprisingly helps create a more cheerful future.