NATURE AND THE NATURE RESEARCH JOURNALS PRESS RELEASE
For papers that will be published online on 17 December 2006.
This press release is copyrighted to the Nature journals mentioned below.
This press release contains:
• Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Relics: Ligament key to evolution of flight – Nature
Genetic mutation in autism identified – Nature Genetics
Synchronized sleeping in the brain – Nature Neuroscience
Humans follow the scent – Nature Neuroscience
• Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
• Geographical listing of authors
PDFs of all the papers mentioned on this release can be found in the relevant journal’s section of http://press.nature.com. Press contacts for the Nature journals are listed at the end of this release.
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PLEASE CITE THE SPECIFIC NATURE JOURNAL AND WEBSITE AS THE SOURCE OF THE FOLLOWING ITEMS. IF PUBLISHING ONLINE, PLEASE CARRY A HYPERLINK TO THE APPROPRIATE JOURNAL’S WEBSITE.
************************ NATURE ***************************
(http://www.nature.com/nature)
[1] Relics: Ligament key to evolution of flight
DOI: 10.1038/nature05435
Researchers have identified a key feature of bird anatomy that helps to stabilize the shoulder joint in flight. The discovery, reported online in this week’s Nature, sheds light on the evolution of flying birds from their non-flying ancestors.
Modern birds, say David Baier and colleagues, have a band of fibrous tissue, called the acrocoracohumeral ligament, which stabilizes the wing against downward dislocation. And because it is non-muscular, it does so without effort. This ligament was either missing or poorly developed in bird ancestors, including early birds such as Archaeopteryx, meaning that they had to use muscular effort to keep the shoulder stable.
Previous attempts to understand the evolution of flight have tended to focus on different aspects of wing function in isolation. But Baier’s team has integrated data gleaned from many different techniques, including comparative anatomy, three-dimensional scanning techniques and mechanical measurements. The resulting model suggests that flight evolved before the sophisticated ligament-based force balance system seen in modern day birds.
Author contact:
David Baier (Brown University, Providence, RI, USA)
Tel: +1 401 863 1032; E-mail: [email protected]
******************* NATURE GENETICS **********************
(http://www.nature.com/naturegenetics)
[2] Genetic mutation in autism identified
DOI: 10.1038/ng1933
A gene called SHANK3 is mutated in a small number of individuals with autism, providing new insight into the biological basis of this disease, according to a study to be published in the January issue of Nature Genetics.
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD), which comprise a range of disorders affecting social interaction and communication, affect 6 out of every 1,000 children. Approximately 3–6% of cases are caused by chromosomal rearrangements, with a small region on chromosome 22 affected frequently in individuals with cognitive deficits accompanied by autistic behaviour. This region contains three genes, one of which – SHANK3 – is a good candidate to be associated with autism given its expression in neuronal synapses.
Thomas Bourgeron and colleagues sequenced SHANK3 in more than 200 individuals with ASD, and found mutations in 3 families. An individual in one family had a significant deletion in the gene, while two brothers in a second family had a smaller deletion. In the third family, a girl with autism had a deletion in SHANK3, while her brother, affected with a mild form of autism called Asperger syndrome, had an additional copy of SHANK3. The protein encoded by SHANK3 interacts with other proteins called neuroligins, which have a role in neuronal signaling. Mutations in two of the genes encoding neuroligins have previously been found in a small number of individuals with autism, suggesting that neuroligin function should receive increased attention in the search for the biological basis of ASD.
Author contact:
Thomas Bourgeron (Pasteur Institute, Paris, France)
Tel: +33 1 40 61 32 16; E-mail: [email protected]
Other papers from Nature Genetics to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
[3] Integrative molecular concept modeling of prostate cancer progression
DOI: 10.1038/ng1935
******************* NATURE NEUROSCIENCE ********************
(http://www.nature.com/natureneuroscience)
[4] Humans follow the scent
DOI: 10.1038/nn1819
The human sense of smell may be better than previously thought, according to a paper in the January issue of Nature Neuroscience. Although humans are often reputed to have a poor sense of smell in comparison to that of other animals, the report shows that people have the ability to track scent trails on the ground.
Noam Sobel and colleagues laid down scent trails in a grassy field, and asked human subjects to find the trail and track it to the end. Subjects were blindfolded and wore thick gloves and earplugs to force them to rely exclusively on smell. The authors found, surprisingly, that the subjects were able to do the task. In addition, they exhibited some of the same tracking strategies observed in other animals, such as dogs.
In subsequent experiments, the authors demonstrated that this ability partially depends on comparisons of odour information in the two nostrils—when subjects have one nostril plugged, their tracking performance is much worse. Although the human subjects in these experiments were much slower at scent tracking than animals like dogs, people improved at scent tracking with time. This raises the intriguing possibility that the sense of smell in humans may be better than is typically believed, and that with training, humans might be capable of tasks previously believed to be the exclusive province of nonhuman animals.
Author contact:
Noam Sobel (University of California Berkeley, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 510 643 0131; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Synchronized sleeping in the brain
DOI: 10.1038/nn1825
Waking experiences are replayed in multiple parts of the brain in a coordinated fashion during sleep, reports a paper in the January issue of Nature Neuroscience.
Matt Wilson and colleagues recorded neural activity in the hippocampus and visual cortex of rats during a part of the sleep cycle called slow wave sleep and during intervening sessions of awake activity, which included time spent running back and forth on a track. Previous research by the same group had shown that hippocampal activity during slow wave sleep often recapitulates sequences of activity produced when the rat traverses a path during waking. The function of such replay remains unclear, but it has been suggested to be important for learning and memory, perhaps by solidifying memories of events experienced during waking.
The authors now report that similar replay activity is also observed in the visual cortex, and that replays in the hippocampus and visual cortex tend to occur at the same time. The results suggest that memory representations of the same event are reactivated during sleep across multiple brain areas. This study did not test the function of coordinated replay activity, but the authors suggest that it may be involved in the transfer of information from the temporary storage space provided by the hippocampus to more permanent representations in the neocortex.
Author contact:
Matthew Wilson (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 253 2046; E-mail: [email protected]
Other papers from Nature Neuroscience to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
[6] Coherent motion of stereocilia assures the concerted gating of hair-cell transduction channels
DOI: 10.1038/nn1818
[7] Attention induces synchronization-based response gain in steady-state visual evoked potentials
DOI: 10.1038/nn1821
[8] Effects of task demands on the responses of color-selective neurons in the inferior temporal cortex
DOI: 10.1038/nn1823
******************************************************************
Items from other Nature journals to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
Nature PHYSICS (http://www.nature.com/naturephysics)
[9] Dispersive, superfluid-like shock waves in nonlinear optics
DOI: 10.1038/nphys486
NATURE MATERIALS (http://www.nature.com/naturematerials)
[10] The role of vacancies and local distortions in the design of new phase-change materials
DOI: 10.1038/nmat1807
[11] Controlled insulator-to-metal transformation in printable polymer composites with nanometal clusters
DOI: 10.1038/nmat1806
[12] High-performance elastomeric nanocomposites via solvent-exchange processing
DOI: 10.1038/nmat1798
[13] Unit-cell scalemapping of ferroelectricity and tetragonality in epitaxial ultrathin ferroelectric films
DOI: 10.1038/nmat1808
[14] Exchange bias using a spin glass
DOI: 10.1038/nmat1809
NATURE NANOTECHNOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/nnano)
[15] In vivo biodistribution and highly efficient tumour targeting of carbon nanotubes in mice
DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2006.170
Nature MEDICINE (http://www.nature.com/naturemedicine)
[16] CD8+ T-cell responses to different HIV proteins have discordant associations with viral load
DOI: 10.1038/nm1520
[17] Targeting the NF-kappa B signaling pathway in Notch1-induced T-cell leukemia
DOI: 10.1038/nm1524
Nature BIOTECHNOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/naturebiotechnolgy)
[18] Molecular evolution of antibody cross-reactivity for two subtypes of type A botulinum neurotoxin
DOI: 10.1038/nbt1269
NATURE CELL BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/naturecellbiology)
[19] Reducing mitochondrial fission results in increased life span and fitness of two fungal ageing models
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1524
[20] Shigella IpgB1 promotes bacterial entry through the ELMO–Dock180 machinery
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1526
[21] Control of cell polarity and motility by the PtdIns(3,4,5)P3 phosphatase SHIP1
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1515
[22] PI(3)Kg has an important context-dependent role in neutrophil chemokinesis
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1517
[23] Cdk and APC activities limit the spindle-stabilizing function of Fin1 to anaphase
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1523
[24] Triggering neural differentiation of ES cells by subtype switching of importin-alpha
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1521
[25] Functional interaction between PML and SATB1 regulates chromatin-loop architecture and transcription of the MHC class I locus
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1516
[26] Dynein is required for receptor sorting and the morphogenesis of early endosomes
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1525
Nature STRUCTURAL & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/natstructmolbiol)
[27] A single subunit, Dis3, is essentially responsible for the yeast exosome core activity
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb1184
NATURE METHODS (http://www.nature.com/nmeth)
[28] SILENCE: a new forward genetic technology
DOI: 10.1038/nmeth991
[29] Sensitive protein detection via triple-binder proximity ligation assays
DOI: 10.1038/nmeth974
[30] Recombineering in Mycobacterium tuberculosis
DOI: 10.1038/nmeth996
[31] MRI-based localization of electrophysiological recording sites within the cerebral cortex at single-voxel accuracy
DOI: 10.1038/nmeth987
***************************************************************
GEOGRAPHICAL LISTING OF AUTHORS
The following list of places refers to the whereabouts of authors on the papers numbered in this release. 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
Crawley: 14
Melbourne: 22
Sydney: 13
AUSTRIA
Vienna: 21
CANADA:
Toronto: 21
FINLAND
Helsinki: 29
Turku : 29
FRANCE
Creteil : 2
Gif-sur-Yvette: 27
Paris: 2, 6, 25
Toulouse: 2
GERMANY
Aachen: 10
Dusseldorf: 21
Frankfurt: 19
Goettingen: 25
Heidelberg: 27
Julich: 13
Ulm: 2
INDIA
Pune: 25
ISRAEL
Rehovot: 4
JAPAN
Aichi : 8
Akita : 21, 22
Fukuoka: 20
Kawaguchi: 20
Osaka: 24
Saitama: 21, 31
Tokyo: 20, 21, 31
NORWAY
Oslo: 2
POLAND
Warsaw: 27
SINGAPORE
Singapore: 11
SOUTH AFRICA
Durban: 16
SWEDEN
Gothenburg: 2, 19
Uppsala: 29
SWITZERLAND
Basel: 22
Geneva: 22
UNITED KINGDOM
Leeds: 14
London: 2, 22
Manchester: 26
Oxford: 16
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Berkeley: 4, 13
La Jolla: 18
Los Angeles: 28
San Francisco: 18, 23
San Jose: 12
Stanford: 15
Connecticut
New Haven: 20
Illinois
Chicago: 17
Evanston: 7
Maywood: 17
Maryland
Bethesda: 21
Chevy Chase: 16
Massachusetts
Boston: 3, 16
Cambridge: 5, 12, 22
Michigan
Ann Arbor: 3
New Jersey:
Princeton: 9
New York
Ithaca: 31
New York: 6, 17, 31
Pennsylvania
Pittsburg: 30
University Park: 4
Rhode Island
Providence: 1
Texas
Austin: 31
Washington:
Redmond: 16
Seattle: 16
PRESS CONTACTS…
For media inquiries relating to embargo policy for all the Nature Research Journals:
Katherine Anderson (Nature London)
Tel: +44 20 7843 4502; E-mail: [email protected]
Ruth Francis (Senior Press Officer, Nature, London)
Tel: +44 20 7843 4562; E-mail: [email protected]
For media inquiries relating to editorial content/policy for the Nature Research Journals, please contact the journals individually:
Nature Biotechnology (New York)
Peter Hare
Tel: +1 212 726 9284; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Cell Biology (London)
Bernd Pulverer
Tel: +44 20 7843 4892; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Genetics (New York)
Orli Bahcall
Tel: +1 212 726 9311; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Materials (London)
Maria Bellantone
Tel: +44 20 7843 4556; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Medicine (New York)
Juan Carlos Lopez
Tel: +1 212 726 9325; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Methods (New York)
Allison Doerr
Tel: +1 212 726 9393; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Nanotechnology (London)
Peter Rodgers
Tel: +44 20 7014 4019; Email: [email protected]
Nature Neuroscience (New York)
Sandra Aamodt (based in California)
Tel: +1 530 795 3256; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Physics (London)
Alison Wright
Tel: +44 20 7843 4555; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (New York)
Michelle Montoya
Tel: +1 212 726 9326; E-mail: [email protected]
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