Biologists used artificial intelligence to make discoveries about molecules and the brain, and overturned long-held assumptions about the immune system and RNA.

Many types of discoveries can surprise and delight, but few findings are more exciting than the overturned assumption — when scientists, sometimes accidentally, stumble upon a way to flip received wisdom on its head.

For example, biologists have assumed for decades that the immune system regulates itself, without the intervention of our brains. But this year they discovered that a neural circuit in the brainstem dials the levels of inflammatory molecules up and down — a revelation made in a lab with expertise not in immunology but in the sense of taste. “Perhaps it took a change in perspective to make the discovery,” Esther Landuis wrote in Quanta.

Scientists made a number of other significant advances in our basic understanding of how life works this year. New tools — artificial intelligence, in particular — have been integrated into biology and are driving discoveries. Researchers are creatively probing the different ways that multicellularity could have evolved, including, in some cases, why it hasn’t. And they’re better understanding how tiny molecular changes manifest in evolution and everyday biology.

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