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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.445 NO.7128 DATED 08 FEBRUARY 2007
This press release contains:
* Summaries of newsworthy papers:
- Quantum optics: A trick of the light
- Neuroscience: New target for Parkinson's disease
- Climate change: Reviewing strategies
- Immunology: Receptor for New World haemorrhagic fever viruses found
- Palaeoclimate: Global continental cooling
- Genetics: ‘Out of Africa’ with Helicobacter pylori
- Plant biology: Lonely guy spotted hanging around rice
And finally… Seal of approval
* Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
* Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Quantum optics: A trick of the light (pp 623-626; N&V)
Light can be stopped and then restarted a small distance away, a paper in this week’s Nature reveals. It’s hoped that such quantum control may find application in quantum information processing.
Lene Vestergaard Hau and colleagues fired a laser pulse into a cloud of Bose-Einstein condensate, a cold, dense atomic system with bizarre quantum properties. The pulse was slowed to a halt and its information became stored in the condensate cloud, but a few atoms were ejected into an entirely separate cloud 160 micrometres away. The original light field then reappeared in the second cloud.
Quantum networks need to be able to transmit information between data storage sites, and the authors hope that their discovery could provide a possible means to do this.
CONTACT
Lene Vestergaard Hau (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 496 5967; E-mail: [email protected]
Michael Fleischhauer (Technische Universitat Kaiserslautern, Germany) N&V author
Tel: +49 631 205 3206; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Neuroscience: New target for Parkinson's disease (pp 643-647)
Results from a mouse study have highlighted a possible new target for treating Parkinson's disease. Therapies that boost the brain’s own levels of cannabinoids may work well alongside those that boost dopamine levels, suggests a paper in Nature this week.
Anatol C. Kreitzer and Robert C. Malenka gave mice displaying Parkinson’s-disease-like symptoms two drugs. The first reduces the breakdown of naturally occurring brain cannabinoids; the second boosts activity at a specific type of dopamine receptor. After treatment, the animals' motor symptoms improved.
Critically, the team provide a potential mechanism for their finding. Together, the two drugs restore a specific type of cellular plasticity, known as long-term depression, where synaptic strength becomes weakened. The effect occurs in a subset of cells that resides in one of the major neural pathways controlling movement, and which is thought to be impaired in Parkinson's disease.
CONTACT
Robert C. Malenka (Stanford University Medical Center, Palo Alto, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 650 724 2730; E-mail: [email protected]
Climate change: Reviewing strategies
Current efforts to both curb and adapt to climate change are sorely lacking, according to two Commentaries in Nature this week.
In his Commentary, Michael Wara investigates how best to engage developing nations in controlling climate change. He looks at the track record of the global carbon market and argues that although it has succeeded politically in engaging developing nations in the Kyoto process, it does not work as well as it should in lowering carbon emissions. The market is distorted in important ways because it considers a basket of gases, not just carbon dioxide, and too few projects to date involve either the energy sector or carbon dioxide emissions. Wara argues that there is a simple way to fix the global carbon market after 2012 - make it a market just for carbon dioxide. Plus there are cheaper ways than the carbon market to capture and destroy other waste gases. Ultimately, if more resources can be directed towards developing low carbon technologies then key developing nations could reduce their emissions while continuing their economic growth.
In a second Commentary Roger Pielke and colleagues argue that more attention must be paid to policies for adapting to climate impacts, such as flooding, regardless of whether their cause is climate change or natural climate variability. The authors outline three reasons why adaptation should be prioritised alongside reduction of emissions, rather than as an afterthought. They conclude that until adaptation is institutionalised at the same level of intensity and investment as achieved by the UNFCCC and Kyoto for mitigation, climate impacts will continue to mount unabated whatever the world achieves in emissions cuts.
CONTACT
Michael Wara (Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, Stanford University, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 415 743 6963; E-mail: [email protected]
Roger Pielke Jr (Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA)
Tel: +1 303 735 0451; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Immunology: Receptor for New World haemorrhagic fever viruses found (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature05539
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 07 February 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 08 February, but at a later date.***
Researchers have identified the receptor that gives New World haemorrhagic fever arenaviruses their entry point into mammalian cells, a discovery that may aid the development of new therapies.
In a paper published online this week by Nature, Hyeryun Choe and colleagues demonstrate that transferrin receptor 1 (TfR1) is the cellular receptor for four different New World arenaviruses - the Junin, Machupo, Guanarito and Sabia viruses. Treating cultured cells with an antibody against this receptor blocks viral entry and replication.
The transferrin receptor is better known for its role in iron transport - the iron-rich transferrin protein binds and iron becomes transported into the cell. Iron depletion of culture medium enhanced, and iron supplementation decreased, the efficiency of infection by Junin and Machupo viruses. So the study raises the possibility that iron deficiency may be a risk factor for these diseases.
CONTACT
Hyeryun Choe (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 355 7586; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] & [5] Palaeoclimate: Global continental cooling (pp 635-638; 639-642; N&V)
New evidence for significant global cooling at the Eocene-Oligocene boundary is presented in this week’s Nature. Two papers explore the changes in continental climate when the Earth cooled from ‘greenhouse’ to ‘icehouse’ about 33.5 million years ago and permanent ice sheets arrived in Antarctica.
Guillame Dupont-Nivet and colleagues investigated sedimentary records from the northern margin of the Tibetan plateau and find a drop in atmospheric water, which caused an aridification and cooling of the area, right at the time of cooling in Antarctica. Previous studies have attributed this cooling to the rapid uplift of the Tibetan plateau, but the authors suggest that regional Tibetan climate may well have been influenced by the global events.
In an unrelated paper on the same climate transition, Alessandro Zanazzi and colleagues explore the cooling that occurred in North America at the time. Using stable isotope measurements from fossil teeth and bones to create a proxy temperature record, they find a large drop in mean annual temperature of 8.2 degrees Celsius - more than is thought to have occurred in the oceans. They propose that this continental transition may explain why so many cold-blooded amphibians and reptiles became extinct whereas mammals, which are able to regulate their own body temperature, were relatively unaffected.
CONTACT
Guillame Dupont-Nivet (Utrecht University, The Netherlands) Author paper [4]
Please note the author is traveling and it may be easier to contact:
Wout Krijgsman (Utrecht University, The Netherlands) Co-author paper [4]
Tel: +31 302 718 266; E-mail: [email protected]
Cor Langereis (Utrecht University, The Netherlands) Co-author paper [4]
E-mail: [email protected]
Alessandro Zanazzi (University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA) Author paper [5]
Tel: +1 803 351 8848; E-mail: [email protected]
Gabriel J. Bowen (Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 765 496 9344; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Genetics: ‘Out of Africa’ with Helicobacter pylori (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature05562
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 07 February 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 08 February, but at a later date.***
Humans were already infected with the ulcer-causing bacterium Helicobacter pylori around 58,000 years ago when man and micro-organism migrated out of Africa.
In this week’s Nature, Mark Achtman and colleagues report that the key patterns in the distribution of H. pylori genetic diversity mirror those of its human host. As in humans, there is a continuous loss of genetic diversity with increasing distance from East Africa. Humans and H. pylori also seem to have spread from East Africa over the same time scale, suggesting that their association predates the ‘out of Africa’ event.
The team also found that the genetic makeup of H. pylori is more diverse than that of humans, so analyses of the micro-organism's DNA might aid future work on human geographic diversity.
CONTACT
Mark Achtman (Max-Plank-Institut für Infektionsbiologie, Berlin, Germany)
Tel: +49 302 846 0751; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] Plant biology: Lonely guy spotted hanging around rice (pp 652-655)
A new enzyme that is important for plant growth is reported in this week’s Nature. The protein helps fine tune the activity of the plant hormone cytokinin, which in turn controls the activity of shoot meristems - the regions of rapidly dividing cells that go on to form leaves, stems and flowers.
Junko Kyozuka and colleagues identified and studied a particular rice mutant with defective meristem activity. They named the mutant lonely guy (log) because often flowers contained a male reproductive structure but no female counterpart.
They isolated the LOG gene and found that it encodes an enzyme that catalyses the final step of bioactive cytokinin synthesis. Transcripts of this gene are confined to meristem stem cells, suggesting that the enzyme is activated in the specific location where it is needed.
CONTACT
Junko Kyozuka (Tokyo University, Japan)
Tel: +81 3 5841 5087; E-mail: [email protected]
[8] And finally… Seal of approval (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature05558
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 07 February 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 08 February, but at a later date.***
It seems that female fur seals are prepared to travel to find the best mate, according to a study published in Nature this week. The lucky males, on the other hand, get to sit back and wait for a partner to come to them. These findings may help solve a long-standing problem in behavioural ecology - the so-called ‘lek paradox’.
Choosy females of many species congregate in specific places called leks where males display, advertising themselves as potential mates. But there is a catch: if females always prefer the flashiest males, genetic variance will be weeded out. Males would come to be rather similar to one another, so there would be less to choose between them. A colony of Antarctic fur seals (Arctocephalus gazella) in South Georgia demonstrates one way to avoid this problem: the females actively move around making important choices between the static males.
Joseph I. Hoffman and colleagues report that female fur seals may travel up to 35 metres to find a mate that is less related to themselves and has a genetic make-up that will maintain genetic variation within their offspring - there is therefore no single best mate for all females. The authors suggest that such a system shows that female choice can be important even in a strongly polygynous species; that is, species in which males often mate with multiple females.
CONTACT
Joseph I. Hoffman (University of Cambridge, UK)
Tel: +44 1223 336 677; E-mail [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[9] Molecular fingerprinting with the resolved modes of a femtosecond laser frequency comb (pp 627-630)
[10] Patterning of sodium ions and the control of electrons in sodium cobaltate (pp 631-634)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 07 February 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 them on this release to avoid multiple mailings they will not appear in print on 08 February, but at a later date.***
[11] CD38 is critical for social behaviour by regulating oxytocin secretion
DOI: 10.1038/nature05526
[12] TRAPPI tethers COPII vesicles by binding the coat subunit Sec23
DOI: 10.1038/nature05527
[13] Continental ice in Greenland during the Eocene and Oligocene
DOI: 10.1038/nature05591
[14] A recurrent mutation in PALB2 in Finnish cancer families
DOI: 10.1038/nature05609
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.
CHINA
Beijing: 4
Gansu: 4
FINLAND
Helsinki: 14
Kuopio: 14
Oulu: 14
Tampere: 14
FRENCH
Gif Sur Yvette: 10
Grenoble: 10
Montpellier: 6
GERMANY
Berlin: 3, 6, 10
Hannover 6
JAPAN
Fukuoka: 11
Kanazawa: 11
Nanao: 11
Okayama: 7
Sendai: 11
Tokyo: 7, 11
Toyama: 11
Yokohama: 7
NETHERLANDS
Utrecht: 4
RUSSIA
Krasnoyarsk: 11
SOUTH AFRICA
Johannesburg: 9
Pretoria: 6, 9
SPAIN
San Sebastian: 6
SWEDEN
Huddinge: 14
Lund: 6
UNITED KINGDOM
Aberdeen: 13
Bristol: 10
Cambridge: 6, 8
Didcot: 10
Liverpool: 10
Oxford: 6, 10
Southampton: 13
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Palo Alto: 2
San Francisco: 2
Colorado
Boulder: 9
Connecticut
New Haven: 12
Florida
Gainesville: 5
Georgia
Atlanta: 3
Maryland
Bethesda: 14
Massachusetts
Boston: 3, 14
Cambridge: 1
Charlestown: 14
Southborough: 3
Montana
Missoula: 3, 12
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia: 5
South Carolina
Columbia: 5
Texas
Houston: 6
PRESS CONTACTS…
For North America and Canada
Katie McGoldrick, Nature Washington
Tel: +1 202 737 2355; E-mail: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
For Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Taiwan
Mika Nakano, Nature Tokyo
Tel: +81 3 3267 8751; E-mail: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
For the UK/Europe/other countries not listed above
Helen Jamison, Nature London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4658; E-mail [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
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