The Top 10 Discoveries of 2014, According to 'Science'

We landed an effin' robot on a comet, an achievement that the editors and scientists at Science magazine have voted the top breakthrough of 2014. After a two-round voting process, though, readers of Science magazine hav​e different opinions on what ​the top breakthroughs of 2014 were. While the otherworldly achievement of landing a robot on a comet led in the first round, the final victors ended up dealing with very familiar, human concerns—the stuff of life, and the stuff to keep life going longer and better.

The Rosetta mission to land on that comet cleaned up during the first round of reader voting as well, which coincided with peak Rosetta attention. Rosetta's slip in the polls by the second round may have just been a reaction to the disappointment of the Philae lander losing power just 57 hours after landing the comet, but still, props to the European Space Agency. It's easy to see why that's the choice for 'top breakthrough' among the editors of Scie​nce.

But the final victorious breakthrough above all breakthroughs, according to Science readers, was the addition of two new, completely unnatural base pairs to a genetic code, expanding the genetic ​alphabet from four nucleotides to six, and integrating them into a strain of bacteria's genetic code. Writing about the fruits of 14 years of research, our​ Jason Koebler wrote that modifying the genetic code, "fundamentally changes what we know about what makes up life. It represents a new way of doing genetic engineering, fosters in a new understanding of what makes DNA, and will, if everything goes according to plan, allow researchers to create proteins and, by extension, traits that have never before been seen in nature."

It's just hard to top "a fundamental shift in what we know about what makes up life." And given that one of life's defining features is growing old and dying, the very close second place selection isn't surprising: the fountain of youth.

Reports published this year found that blood from young mice, when pumped into the circulatory system of older mice, helps​ reverse signs of aging. A factor called GDF11 was isolated from young mouse blood and found to boost muscle strength and endurance of old mice, rejuvenate the heart, and spur neuron growth in the mouse's brain. Young mouse plasma was found to bolster an aging mouse's spacial memory. Clinical trials where Alzheimer's patients are treated with plasma donated by young adults have begun —something to keep an eye on in the coming year.

The cr​eation of insulin-producing stem cells, which could fight diabetes, came in fourth place behind Rosetta, followed by breakthroughs lead​ing to an easy cure for hepatitis C.

As we say goodbye to 2014, what you remember about what scientists were up to will obviously depend on what you were following the closest—be it breakthroughs in how we und​erstand the evolution of birds from dinosaurs, the y​ear we found ever older human artwork, this time well outside of Europe, or the​ year that saw cubesats become commonplace, just to use Science's examples. As 2014 was also the year that scientists figured out how to hack a mouse's memory and create better ones, the odds are good that we'll be looking back on science in 2014 fondly.