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VOL.437 NO.7057 DATED 15 SEPTEMBER 2005
* Inflammatory disease: An outside-in view of psoriasis
* Seismology: Biggest recorded earthquake was brewing for four centuries
* Physiology: A forceful finding about atherosclerosis
* Applied physics: Nanomagnets get it together
* Evolution: Female bats share males with their mums
* Astrophysics: A strange quasar
* Forensics: Nuclear tests leave signature in teeth to reveal age
* And finally: Bee's-eye view of petal patterns
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[1] Inflammatory disease: An outside-in view of psoriasis (pp369-375)
Scientists have previously taken two different views on what triggers
psoriasis, an inflammatory disease of the skin and joints. Some people have
regarded it as an immune disorder that affects the skin (the 'inside-out'
hypothesis) whereas others have seen it as a skin disorder with
immunological repercussions (the 'outside-in' hypothesis). But deciding
between these two ideas has remained difficult in the absence of a mouse
model.
A new finding, described in this week's Nature, addresses this problem:
Erwin Wagner and his colleagues found that cells in human psoriatic lesions
have decreased expression of the gene JUNB. The team has now been able to
engineer mice that lack the analogous mouse gene. These animals develop a
skin disease almost identical to psoriasis in people. Genetic evidence from
the study shows that the skin lesions develop independently of immune cells,
supporting the 'outside-in' hypothesis.
CONTACT:
Erwin F. Wagner (Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, Vienna, Austria)
Tel: +43 1 797 30 888; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Seismology: Biggest recorded earthquake was brewing for four centuries
(pp404-407; N&V)
The earthquake that rocked Chile in 1960 - at magnitude 9.5, the biggest
ever recorded - was preceded by almost 400 years of accumulating stress,
according to studies of the region's buried soils and sand. Strain had been
building up on the fault ever since the Spanish conquistadors were jolted by
a large quake in 1575.
Seismologists had previously been confused because the region had
experienced earthquakes in 1837 and 1737, making the 1960 monster difficult
to explain - the fault would not have had time to become sufficiently
stressed to produce the magnitude 9.5 event. In this week's Nature, a team
led by Marco Cisternas now reports that these earlier quakes produced little
if any subsidence or tsunami in the study area near the centre of the
earthquake fault, meaning that they probably did not significantly release
the stress building on the fault.
By studying soils and sands laid down over the past 2,000 years, the
researchers have built up a picture of how and when previous tremors
occurred along the fault, which runs between the Nazca and South American
plates on the continent's west coast. The 1960 event represents between 250
and 350 years' worth of motion along a 1,000-kilometre section of the fault,
where the Nazca plate is grinding below the continent at a rate of some 8
metres per century. A related News and Views article by Sergio Barrientos
accompanies this research.
CONTACT:
Marco Cisternas (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Valparaíso,
Chile)
Tel: +56 32 274 508; E-mail: [email protected]
Sergio Barrientos (Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty
Organization, Vienna, Austria)
E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Physiology: A forceful finding about atherosclerosis (pp426-431)
In a cardiovascular disease known as atherosclerosis, plaques accumulate in
vessel regions with low or disturbed blood flow. The endothelial cells that
line these vessels somehow sense the unusual patterns of mechanical stress
on the vessel walls.
This week in Nature, Martin Alexander Schwartz and his colleagues show that
three proteins, which are expressed in vessel endothelial cells, are
required for detecting this mechanical stress. They further demonstrate that
each protein has a distinct role in converting the mechanical force into a
biochemical signal inside the cells. These new findings shed light on how
disruptions in blood flow stimulate endothelial cells and trigger the
formation of atherosclerotic plaques. Therefore, the results could help lead
to the discovery of new drugs to stop the atherosclerotic process from
happening.
CONTACT:
Martin Alexander Schwartz (The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA and
University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA)
Tel: +1 434 243 4813; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] & [5] Applied physics: Nanomagnets get it together (pp389-392 & 393-395;
N&V)
A radio set the size of a bacterium is one of the visions suggested by a
pair of Nature papers from teams in the USA. They have both demonstrated how
arrays of tiny magnets, each less than 100 nanometres (one nanometre is a
millionth of a millimetre) across, can be controlled so that they all
undergo magnetic oscillations in step, rather like compass needles swinging
periodically between one direction and the other. These oscillations can
generate microwave signals for telecommunication. Such an array could also
act as a microwave receiver, so that devices like this would enable
microchips to communicate with one another without being wired together in
physical contact.
Two teams, one led by Shehzaad Kaka, and another headed by Fred Mancoff,
have independently achieved synchronization - so-called phase-locking - of
the magnetic oscillations of two such nanomagnets placed close together.
This phase-locking occurs when the objects are just 400-500 nanometres
apart. The effect is similar to the way that two pendulums will come into
synchrony if they are both attached to the same support.
The magnetic oscillations are induced by applying a d.c. electric current to
the miniature magnetic islands. This makes the direction of the magnetic
'poles' of the islands start to rotate, which in turn creates an
electromagnetic signal at a frequency corresponding to that of microwaves.
If the islands are close enough together, rather than just generating their
own independent microwave signals they generate a single signal with twice
the intensity: a sign that phase-locking has happened. In principle,
phase-locking should work not just with two nanomagnets but with a whole
bank of them. A related News & Views article by Pritiraj Mohanty accompanies
these papers.
CONTACT:
Shehzaad Kaka (Electromagnetic Technology Division, National Institute of
Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO, USA) - paper no: [4]
Tel: +1 303 497 7365; E-mail: [email protected]
Fred B. Mancoff (Freescale Semiconductor Inc., Chandler, AZ, USA) - paper
no: [5]
Tel: +1 480 814 2143; E-mail: [email protected]
Pritiraj Mohanty (Boston University, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 353 9297, E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Evolution: Female bats share males with their mums (pp408-411)
Female greater horseshoe bats know a thing or two about keeping it in the
family. A study in this week's Nature shows that groups of related females
from different generations tighten their family bonds by sharing the same
mates.
Greater horsehoe bats (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum) tend to live in segregated
sexual groups, with females raising their offspring together. But when
mating season comes around, males are in for a bonanza - groups of females
search for individual males and form temporary mating groups consisting of
several individuals.
Females tend to seek out the same male year after year, ensuring that their
offspring are always full siblings and promoting cooperation among
roostmates, report Stephen Rossiter and his colleagues. But when they used
genetic techniques to compile the family trees of some 452 bats at
Woodchester Mansion in Gloucestershire, UK, they found that many females
share mates with their mothers and grandmothers - a tactic that serves to
bind families even closer together without the dangers of inbreeding.
CONTACT:
Stephen J. Rossiter (Queen Mary, University of London and University of
Bristol, Bristol, UK)
Tel: +44 20 7 882 7528; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] Astrophysics: A strange quasar (pp381-384)
A quasar lying at the edge of a gas cloud, with no significant host galaxy
surrounding it, is reported in this week's Nature. This special case raises
questions about our understanding of quasar formation.
Astronomers think that quasars are powered by supermassive black holes lying
at the centre of massive galaxies. The host galaxy can be hard to see
because of the glare from the quasar itself; this led to the 'naked' quasars
claim in the 1990s that is now discredited.
Images from the Hubble Space Telescope show a blob of gas beside the quasar
and an irregularly shaped companion galaxy, apparently distorted by
interaction with the quasar. The non-detection of a central host galaxy for
the quasar may mean it is either too compact to be separated from the
quasar, or too faint. Pierre Magain and colleagues found that if a host does
exist, it is significantly dimmer than expected from the quasar's brightness
and size. They suggest that a dim host galaxy may have a massive dark halo
that feeds the quasar and distorts the neighbouring galaxy.
CONTACT:
Pierre Magain (Université de Liège, Belgium)
Tel: +32 4 366 9753; E-mail: [email protected]
[8] Forensics: Nuclear tests leave signature in teeth to reveal age
(pp333-334)
The above-ground testing of nuclear bombs in the 1950s and 1960s may have an
unexpectedly useful legacy - helping forensic scientists to improve the
estimation of an individual's age at the time of their death. Tooth enamel
preserves a permanent record of the amount of radioactive fallout present in
the atmosphere when the tooth was formed. By determining the amount of
radioactive carbon-14 in the tooth, scientists can then calculate the age of
the tooth, and its owner.
The method is accurate to within roughly 1.6 years - better than current
methods of evaluating skeletal remains and tooth wear, which are accurate to
within only 5-10 years in adults, report Jonas Frisén and his colleagues in
a Brief Communication in this week's Nature. But as nuclear testing only
began in 1955, the technique does not work for individuals born before 1943
because all of their teeth would already have been formed by this time.
When nuclear testing began, it dramatically increased the amount of
radioactive carbon-14 in the atmosphere, the researchers explain. This found
its way into human teeth after being incorporated into plants and thus
entering the food chain. Levels began to drop off again when above-ground
testing was stopped in 1963 - so comparing the amount of carbon-14 in tooth
enamel to the records of the decline in atmospheric levels gives an accurate
picture of when the tooth in question was formed.
CONTACT:
Jonas Frisén (Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden)
Tel: +46 8 5248 7562; E-mail: [email protected]
[9] And finally: Bee's-eye view of petal patterns (p334)
Some brightly coloured but night-blooming flowers might use fluorescence to
attract pollinators, according to a Brief Communication in this week's
Nature. Fluorescence is a rarely deployed communication signal, so far
recorded only in budgerigars and possibly mantis shrimp, and was not thought
to be used by plants until now.
Francisco García-Carmona and colleagues extracted and purified the
pigments of Mirabilis jalapa flowers. They found that the fluorescence
emitted by one pigment, a yellow betaxanthin, is absorbed by another
pigment, a violet betacyanin, to create a contrasting green fluorescent
pattern on the flower petals. Bees and bats, which are sensitive to green
light, might consequently be drawn to these flowers.
This work opens up new possibilities for pollinator perception, as
fluorescence has not previously been considered a potential signal in
flowers.
CONTACT:
Francisco García-Carmona (Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, Spain)
Tel: +34 9 6836 4765; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE...
[10] Extreme oxygen isotope ratios in the early Solar System (pp385-388)
[11] Astronomical pacing of methane release in the Early Jurassic period
(pp396-399)
[12] River plumes as a source of large-amplitude internal waves in the
coastal ocean (pp400-403)
[13] A sensory source for motor variation (pp412-416)
[14] Wnt7b mediates macrophage-induced programmed cell death in
patterning of the vasculature (pp417-421)
[15] Membrane vesicles traffic signals and facilitate group activities in
a prokaryote (pp422-425; N&V)
[16] Mesoscale conformational changes in the DNA-repair complex
Rad50/Mre11/Nbs1 upon binding DNA (pp440-443)
GEOGRAPHICAL LISTING OF AUTHORS...
The following list of places refers to the whereabouts of authors on the
papers numbered in this release. For example, London: 4 - this means that
on paper number four, there will be at least one author affiliated to an
institute or company in London. The listing may be for an author's main
affiliation, or for a place where they are working temporarily. Please see
the PDF of the paper for full details.
AUSTRALIA
Sydney: 14
AUSTRIA
Vienna: 1
BELGIUM
Liege: 7
CHILE
Concepcion: 2
Santiago: 2
Valparaiso: 2
FRANCE
Neuilly: 1
Orsay: 10
Paris: 7, 20
Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy: 10
GERMANY
Cologne: 11
Heidelberg: 1
Potsdam: 7
INDIA
Kanpur: 2
Thiruvananthapuram: 2
REPUBLIC OF INDONESIA
Bandung: 2
Jakarta: 2
ITALY
Milan: 3
JAPAN
Tokorozawa: 14
Tsukuba: 2
THE NETHERLANDS
Delft: 16
SPAIN
Murcia: 9
SWEDEN
Stockholm: 8
SWITZERLAND
Bern: 3
Sauverny: 7
UNITED KINGDOM
Bristol: 6
London: 6
Milton Keynes: 11
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Arizona
Chandler: 5
California
La Jolla: 3
Livermore: 8, 10
San Francisco: 13
San Jose: 4
Colorado
Boulder: 4
Massachusetts
Cambridge: 14
New Jersey
Princeton: 13
New York
Tarrytown: 14
North Carolina
Chapel Hill: 3
Ohio
Cincinnati: 14
Oklahoma
Oklahoma City: 15
Oregon
Corvallis: 12
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia: 3, 14
Texas
Dallas: 14
Houston: 14
Virginia
Charlottesville: 3
Washington
Seattle: 2
PRESS CONTACTS...
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Tel: +1 202 737 2355; E-mail: [email protected]
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For Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Taiwan
Rinoko Asami, Nature Tokyo
Tel: +81 3 3267 8751; E-mail: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
For the UK/Europe/other countries not listed above
Ruth Francis, Nature London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4562; E-mail [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
Katharine Mansell, Nature London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4658; E-mail: [email protected]
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