Top 5 papers of 2010

This was a year of headline science news: the first cell with a linkurl:synthetic genome,;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57443/ a new linkurl:human-Neanderthal ancestor;http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/57254/ and, recently, alien life. Oh, wait...that was just linkurl:bacteria growing on arsenic.;http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57851/ linkurl:Never mind.;http://www.slate.com/id/2276919

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But, according to scientists, this year's most important papers were not those that made the front page of international newspapers, but the quiet and persistent investigations of the molecular foundations of life. From the long-awaited structure of a bacterial enzyme to how Salmonella grows in the gut, presented here in ascending order are the five most important papers in biology of 2010, as reviewed and ranked by members of the Faculty of 1000.linkurl:5. Mechanotransduction proteins found;http://f1000.com/5074956?key=wk85ldm1n8tyrsplinkurl:The paper:;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/20813920?dopt=Abstract&holding=f1000,f1000m B. Coste, et al., "Piezo1 and Piezo2 are essential components of distinct mechanically activated cation channels," Science, 330:55-60, 2010.A new family of proteins, characterized in a mouse cell line, shines new light on the previously mysterious molecular...