10 THE SCIENTIST | the-scientist.com
Transcending Biology
ANDRZEJ KRAUZET
he past couple of months have been heavy for us at
The Scientist. Heavy for everyone. From our home
offices, we’ve been tirelessly reporting on the global pandemic
that continues to grip the world in its stranglehold. We are
trying to stay atop a flood of information and stories that need
telling as we also contend with challenges that most of us have
never confronted, and none of us will likely soon forget. At
the same time, we continue to search across the life sciences for
other nuggets of research worth sharing. This month, our issue
is focused on the science of memory.
Our memories make us who we are, subconsciously driving our
behaviors and dictating how we view the world. One of the most
interesting things about memory is its imperfection. Rather than
serving as a precise record of past events, our memories are more
like concocted reflections, filtered and distilled from pure reality into
a personal brew that is formulated by our own unique physiologies
and emotional backgrounds. The wholly unique universe we each
create—separate from but still tethered to the actual universe—is the
product of electrical signals zapping through the lump of fatty flesh
inside our skulls. Biology gives birth to something that exists outside
the boundaries of biology.
The neural machinery involved in the formation, storage, and
retrieval of memories is coming to light in labs across the world,
but science has not yet solved this particular puzzle. In this issue,
you’ll read about talented researchers who use modern tools such
as optogenetics and genome editing to probe the biology underly-
ing memory. In lab animals, these scientists can force the recall of
memories at the flick of a molecular switch, implant false memo-
ries, and erode a real memory to the point of vanishing. Through
these studies and others, perhaps science will one day robustly
characterize memory’s biological nuts and bolts. But will we ever
truly understand, and perhaps directly manipulate, the personal
reality created by each individual’s brain?
What scares me most at this juncture in world history is
how the COVID-19 pandemic will live in the memories of those
affected by it. The patchiness of the current global predicament
will dictate our individual familiarity with the ravages of SARS-
CoV-2. Some will remain largely unscathed by illness, many will
feel the economic pinch of societal lockdowns, many will also lose
friends or loved ones to the virus, others will succumb to it them-
selves. No one will emerge unchanged.
Memories living within the survivors will mirror the array of
individual experiences. For many, traumatic memories of the pan-
demic—whether that be illness from the virus or any of the hard-ships that come along
with social isolation
and the global eco-
nomic downturn—
will become uninvited
guests, intruding on
the daily business of
living. On the opposite end of the spectrum, with any luck, many
young people living through this reality will recall this period of their
lives with a hazy bemusement. “Remember when we were kids, and
we got to stay home from school with Mom and Dad for months
on end?” Again, the mountain of memories that will accrue in this
complicated time will not faithfully record the events now unfurl-
ing. Rather, they will form smudged reproductions of the difficulties
we are all grappling with. Those memories, and the behaviors they
drive, will linger, perhaps for generations.
The scientific enterprise is currently front and center. Millions
around the world are counting on researchers and clinicians to
pull us from the darkness of this pandemic, as dozens of drugs and
vaccines make their way through development and organizations
around the globe work to distribute accurate tests that can track the
spread of the disease. And this is only the first battle. In the months
and years to come, those of us who survive this episode will again
call on healthcare providers and scientists to rescue us from the
mental and physical aftereffects of the pandemic. For the foreseeable
future, the world will need science and medicine more than ever
before in our history. And we will need humanity in equal measure.
No matter the complexion of our memories of this time, it is my sin-
cere hope that we can treat one another and the researchers striving
to corral and vanquish this viral foe with understanding, compas-
sion, and respect.
This issue of The Scientist is dedicated to the late Nicola
F. Morabito (1923–2020), my grandfather and an inspira-
tion to many. Memories of him, imperfect reflections of real-
ity though they may be, will live on in me and in the others
whose lives he touched. gEditor-in-Chief
[email protected]Our memories, rooted in the very real cells and molecules
of our brains, create a universe separate from reality.BY BOB GRANTFROM THE EDITOR