WWW.NATURE.COM/NATURE
VOL.436 NO.7052 DATED 11 AUGUST 2005
* Astronomy: Three's a crowd in the asteroid belt
* Genetics: hangover gene helps build alcohol tolerance
* Genomics: International consortium reports complete rice genome
* Climate: Dry start to ice age
* Ionospheric physics: Whirlpools in space
* Cell biology: Cell division is more than skin deep
* Molecular biology: Modelling protein machinery
* Astronomy: Dark star has dark jets
* And finally... A rose by any other colour
[1] Astronomy: Three's a crowd in the asteroid belt (pp 822-824)
An asteroid with two moons has been discovered by astronomers in the USA and
France, and is reported in this week's Nature. Franck Marchis of the
University of California at Berkeley and his co-workers have spotted two
small bodies orbiting around the 280-kilometre-wide asteroid called 87
Sylvia, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
This is the first time that a triple asteroid system has been seen. The
researchers saw 87 Sylvia's two diminutive companions in observations made
at the European Southern Observatory in Cerro Paranal in northern Chile.
Over a period of two months in 2004 they watched the two 'moonlets' orbit
around 87 Sylvia. One of them, first seen in 2001 and denoted S/2001(87)1,
orbits at a distance of about 1,360 kilometres, while the other, which
Marchis and colleagues have now seen for the first time and have called
S/2004(87)1, is a mere 710 kilometres from the parent asteroid. The
researchers estimate the sizes of these moonlets at about 18 and 7
kilometres, respectively.
They think that 87 Sylvia and its moons resulted from a collision with
another asteroid. Most of the debris accumulated into a 'rubble pile', with
the two moonlets being leftover debris.
CONTACT
Franck Marchis (University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 510 599 0604; [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
[2] Genetics: hangover gene helps build alcohol tolerance (pp 845-851)
Researchers have discovered a new gene that helps fruitflies develop
tolerance to alcohol. The gene - called, appropriately enough, hangover -
functions in a genetic pathway that allows the flies to withstand increasing
doses of the drug, a mechanism that is thought to lead to dependence and
addiction.
Flies lacking the hangover gene do not develop tolerance upon increased
exposure to ethanol vapour, report Ulrike Heberlein and colleagues in this
week's Nature. The flies also have defective responses to stresses such as
increased temperature, suggesting that the gene might have a more general
role in dealing with stressful conditions.
A similar pathway might function in humans, the authors say, suggesting that
addiction may initially be triggered by the way in which the body responds
to biological stressors such as high alcohol intake. The fact that
fruitflies show similar characteristics means that they may prove useful for
future studies of alcohol dependence.
CONTACT
Ulrike Heberlein (University of California at San Francisco, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 415 502 1717; E-mail: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
[3] Climate: Dry start to ice age (pp 833-836)
The beginning of the last ice age coincided with a 468-year-long period of
dry weather, according to research in this week's Nature.
Frank Sirocko and colleagues studied sediments found beneath a lake
in the Eifel mountains, Germany, which reveal evidence of dust storms,
bushfires and widespread aridity, leading to a loss of trees associated with
warmer climates.
The scientists think that the drop in rainfall and temperature was
linked to the sudden southward shift of the North Atlantic drift, the ocean
current that brings warm surface waters to northern Europe. Because the
amount of sunlight reaching the Earth then was very similar to that of
today, the find may be relevant for climate scientists trying to understand
how ice ages start, they say.
CONTACT
Frank Sirocko (Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany)
Tel: +49 6131 392 2714; E-mail: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
Another contact is the Press Office at University of Mainz:
Bettina Leinauer
Tel. +49 6131 392 6112; E-Mail: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
[4] Ionospheric physics: Whirlpools in space (pp 825-828; N&V)
A new class of whirlpool-like structures has been discovered in the Earth's
magnetosphere, the region around our planet where the Earth's magnetic field
governs the behaviour of charged particles (ions) in the outer atmosphere
and the solar wind.
David Sundkvist and co-workers have seen vortices several tens of kilometres
across in the thin gas or 'plasma' of ions within the magnetosphere. Their
data comes from a group of four space satellites called the Cluster mission,
which were launched by the European Space Agency in 2000 to map out the
shape of the magnetosphere.
The vortices, called drift-kinetic Alfvén vortices, have been predicted to
exist in the magnetosphere but were never previously observed. Last year,
another team of researchers reported that the Cluster satellites had
detected a different kind of magnetospheric structure, called
Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices, which are several thousands of kilometres across.
Both these types of vortex are a sign of turbulence in the magnetospheric
plasma. They can enable the ions in the solar wind to 'puncture' the
magnetic sheath that otherwise shields the Earth from such particles, giving
rise to various types of 'space weather' that can disrupt radio
communication signals passing through the upper atmosphere.
CONTACT
David Sundkvist (Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, Sweden)
Tel: +46 18 5922; E-mail: [email protected]
Melvyn Goldstein (NASA Goddard Flight Centre, Greenbelt, MD, USA)
Tel: +1 301 286 7828; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Cell biology: Cell division is more than skin deep (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature03922
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 10
August at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern time (which is also when the
embargo lifts) as part of our AOP (ahead of print) programme. Although we
have included it on this release to avoid multiple mailings it will not
appear in print on 11 August, but at a later date.***
Skin is an important environmental barrier that protects us against germs
and keeps fluids inside the body. A new mechanism that explains how the skin
becomes several cell layers thick, and is composed of different stratified
cell types, is reported this week in an advance online publication of
Nature.
To perform its functions, the skin has to form several layers of epidermal
cells that are continually renewed throughout our lives. How this process
occurs has been unclear, but previous studies in cultured skin cells
suggested that stem cells at the base of the epidermis form new cells that
then migrate outwards to the skin surface. Working with mouse embryos, Terry
Lechler and Elaine Fuchs now find that the parent stem cells anchored at the
base of the epidermis replicate asymmetrically and shed their daughter cells
in a certain direction - towards the surface of the skin.
What's more, the researchers found that these skin stem cells are
pre-programmed for asymmetric cell division before they even start
replicating. Certain types of proteins are only found on the side of the
stem cells that points towards the skin surface. These proteins orient the
machinery that drives cell division - the so-called spindles - in the right
direction. As a result, when the stem cells divide they also shed their
daughter cells towards the surface of the skin.
CONTACT
Elaine Fuchs (HHMI, The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA)
Tel: +1 212 327 7953; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Molecular biology: Modelling protein machinery (861-865)
A model for predicting how an unknown protein fits into the molecular
machinery driving early embryogenesis in the nematode worm C. elegans is
reported in this week's Nature. Molecular machines are interacting groups of
proteins and molecules that, similar to the gears in a watch that function
together to keep time, drive cellular processes such as DNA synthesis and
cell division.
Marc Vidal and colleagues have developed a model that allows them to predict
where a protein can be found in a cell, on the basis of what process it is
required for and what other proteins it interacts with. Their model is based
on computer analysis of large data sets for 661 genes active in early worm
embryogenesis. Using the model, they were able to predict where proteins of
unknown function fitted into each of the hundreds of molecular machines of
the cell. The team found that proteins that interact with each other are
more likely to be found at the same time and in the same place in the body,
and are also more likely to be important for similar biological processes.
This model is a potential reservoir for hundreds of predictions about
cellular processes, the researchers write.
CONTACT
Marc L. Vidal (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 632 5180; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] Astronomy: Dark star has dark jets (pp 819-821)
The accretion disk around the black hole Cygnus X-1 loses most of its energy
through 'dark jets' of escaping particles that have been accelerated close
to the speed of light, according to research in this week's Nature.
Previously, astronomers thought that most of the energy was lost when matter
falling inwards was heated enough to emit bright X-rays.
Elena Gallo and colleagues estimated the power output of the dark
jets by watching how they inflated a ring of material surrounding the black
hole.
CONTACT
Elena Gallo (University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Tel: + 31 205 257 477; E-mail: [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE...
[10] Evasion of the p53 tumour surveillance network by tumour-derived MYC
mutants (pp 807-811; N&V)
[11] Negative lattice expansion from the
superconductivity-antiferromagnetism crossover in ruthenium copper oxides
(pp 829-832)
[12] The chemical structure of the Hawaiian mantle plume (pp 837-840;
N&V)
[13] A wide depth distribution of seismic tremors along the northern
Cascadia margin (pp 841-844)
[14] A high-resolution map of active promoters in the human genome (pp
876-880)
[15] Small vertical movement of a K1 channel voltage sensor measured with
luminescence energy transfer (pp 848-851)
[16] Gating charge displacement in voltage-gated ion channels involves
limited
transmembrane movement (pp 852-856)
[17] Voltage-sensor activation with a tarantula toxin as cargo (pp
857-860)
[18] Identification of JAK/STAT signalling components by genome-wide RNA
interference (pp 871-875)
[19] Mutations in a signalling pathway (p 792)
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.
BRAZIL
Pelotas: 3
CANADA
Montreal: 3
Sidney: 13
Toronto: 3
CHINA
Shanghai: 3
FRANCE
Cremieux: 3
Montpellier: 3
Orleans: 1
Paris: 1
Toulouse: 5
GERMANY
Bochum: 5
Dresden: 7
Freiberg: 4
Gottingen: 18
Heidelberg: 18
Mainz: 4
Wurzburg: 2
INDIA
New Delhi: 3
ITALY
Candiolo: 19
JAPAN
Ibaraki: 3
Fukuoka: 9
Kanagawa: 12
Meguro-Ku: 12
Mishima: 3
Nagoya: 3
Tokyo: 3, 9
Tsukuba: 9
KOREA
Gwangju: 17
PHILIPPINES
Manila: 3
SWEDEN
Uppsala: 5
TAIWAN
Tainan: 3
Taipei: 3
THAILAND
Nakron Pathom: 3
THE NETHERLANDS
Amsterdam: 8
Dwingeloo: 8
UNITED KINGDOM
Aberdeen: 11
Cambridge: 11
Edinburgh: 11
Norwich: 3
Southampton: 8
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Arizona
Tucson: 3
California
La Jolla: 14
Los Angeles: 14, 15, 16
San Francisco: 2
Hawaii
Honolulu: 12
Illinois
Urbana: 15
Maryland
Baltimore: 19
Bethesda: 17
Rockville: 3
Massachusetts
Boston: 7
Cambridge: 10
Waltham: 15
Missouri
St Louis: 3
New Jersey
Piscataway: 3
New Mexico
Albuquerque: 16
New York
Cold Spring Harbour: 3, 10
Ithaca: 3
New York: 7, 10, 16
Upton: 3
Ohio
Cleveland: 19
Tennessee
Memphis: 10
Texas
Dallas: 19
Wisconsin
Madison: 3, 14
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Ruth Francis, Nature London
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