Top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2012 from TIME Health & Family

I found this list of medical marvels through scientific research in 2012 on TIME’s Health & Family website. All of these discoveries and innovations would not have been possible without electronics. The advances in Medical electronics make research not only possible, but enable researchers to discover these things faster than ever. Along-side each of the following 10 items, I have provided some of the key electronics involved in these helping these medical research areas reach new heights.

1. Junk No More

After being ignored as useless genetic garbage, the vast 98% of the human genome that does not code for genes finally has a purpose. It turns out that these previously insignificant portions of DNA are the true genetic masterminds, or metabolic switches that regulate how and when genes function as well as how prolifically genes churn out their respective proteins. Without them, scientists say, genes would be like a jumbled mess of words that have no meaning. Scientists are already exploiting the newly discovered trove of biological information and pursuing new ways of controlling, and possibly even curing, diseases with the flick of a genetic switch.

Electronics role: 454 Life Sciences, Illumina, Beckman Coulter, Pacific Biosciences just to name a few of the companies who have developed modern DNA sequencers.