Decoding Bio Snapshot 2024

We're back with another edition! This time, the Decoding Bio Community weighs in on the most impactful papers over the past year

It is indisputable that the most important technological and scientific advancements have arisen from the convergence of scientific fields. Genomic sequencing, protein structure prediction and re-engineering CRISPR for mammalian cells all required multiple perspectives to bring these ideas to existence. This multidisciplinarity, however, comes at the cost of multi-specialization: for a scientist to be up-to-date, they have to pay attention to their subfield and any adjacent ones. With the total number of articles published growing exponentially (a 47% increase from 2016 to 2022 and no signs of slowing down¹), it seems like a Sisyphean task.

The extended Decoding Bio Community reads thousands of these papers per year spanning a broad range of topics, from how quantum physical interactions affect biological processes to how technology affects human behavior. We hope that through our analysis, Decoding Bio can uncover the signal — important scientific advances — from the noise of millions of publications from a few key papers that we feel are changing the scientific landscape.

While we selfishly enjoy this task, our bolder goal is that people from disparate backgrounds read our reports and use their different perspectives to solve challenges, develop new technologies or start new companies. 

This year, instead of showcasing up-and-coming companies in our Snapshot, we’ve decided to ask our community to discuss the most consequential papers published in the past 18 months across five widely-discussed themes in biology:

1. Generative AI

2. Biosecurity

3. Cell-Based Medicine

4. Immunology

5. Software Infrastructure 

In each of the themes, you will find comments on why this particular publication matters, its impact on the field, and potential challenges in the space.

Let us know what you think by messaging us here or here.

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We’d like to thank all the authors involved in this writing this report:

1. Andrew Pannu

2. David Li

3. Elliot Hershberg

4. Ketan Yerneni

5. Morgan Cheatham

6. Niko McCarty

7. Patrick Malone

8. Phillipp Lorenz

9. Shelby Newsad

10. Zahra Khwaja

A special thank you to the entire team at Bunsen who crafted this beautiful website to make this year’s Snapshot truly special.

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[1] Hanson, M., Gómez Barreiro, P., Crosetto, P. & Brockington, D. The Strain on Scientific Publishing. (arXiv, 2023).