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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.447 NO.7141 DATED 10 MAY 2007
This press release contains:
• Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Genetics: Marsupial genome sequenced
Planetary science: Extrasolar planet mirror ball
Oceanography: Oceanic short circuit
Materials: Lithium superconducts without pressure
And finally… Gender-specific differences fuel biodiversity
• Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
• Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Genetics: Marsupial genome sequenced (pp 167-177)
The first high-quality draft of a marsupial genome sequence is revealed in this week’s Nature. The genome of the grey, short-tailed opossum (Monodelphis domestica) offers interesting insights into the genetics of the immune system and the X chromosome.
Kerstin Lindblad-Toh and colleagues identified a wide range of immune genes. Some seem to be marsupial-specific, whereas others are shared with placental mammals. This, alongside the discovery of a novel type of T-cell receptor, indicates that marsupials had already evolved a complex immune system when they diverged from the placental mammal lineage some 180 million years ago — a suggestion that is at odds with previous claims of a primitive immune system.
The results also suggest that random inactivation of the X chromosome — a phenomenon seen in placental mammals whereby one random copy of the X chromosome is switched off to avoid a double dose of 'X genes' — appeared alongside the evolution of a complex genetic locus called the X inactivation centre (XIC). The XIC is lacking in the opossum genome, a finding that may help to explain why, in the opossum, it's always the paternally derived X chromosome that is silenced.
The newly sequenced genome seems to contain 18,000–20,000 protein-coding genes, most of which have counterparts in placental mammals. Opossum-specific genes mostly originate from the expansion and rapid turnover of gene families involved in immunity, sensory perception and detoxification.
The sequencing of the opossum genome marks an important point in genetics research and not just because of the special place occupied by the marsupial in the evolutionary tree. The animals provide a good model of malignant melanoma, and are useful in studies of regeneration because newborns can heal complete transections of spinal cord.
Please note this paper is being published at the same time and with the same embargo as related papers in Genome Research.
CONTACT
Kerstin Lindblad-Toh (Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA)
Please note the author is travelling and it might be easiest to contact:
Nicole Davis (Scientific Communications Specialist, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 258 0952; E-mail: [email protected]
Geoff Spencer (Public Affairs Specialist, National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA)
Tel: +1 301 451 8325; E-mail: [email protected]
Leo Goodstadt (MRC Functional Genetics Unit, University of Oxford, UK) Co-author
This author can be contacted through the MRC press office:
Tel: +44 20 7637 6011; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] & [3] Planetary science: Extrasolar planet mirror ball (AOP DOI: 10.1038/nature05863; pp 183-186; N&V)
***Paper [2] will be published electronically on Nature's website on 09 May 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 10 May, but at a later date.***
An extrasolar 'hot Jupiter' planet may act like a giant mirror ball, re-radiating almost all of its incident energy back out to space, suggests a paper published online by Nature this week. But a second paper, published in this week’s Nature, tells a very different story, making 'hot Jupiters' seem all the more intriguing and complex.
'Hot Jupiters' are extrasolar planets whose mass is similar to that of Jupiter, but which orbit much closer to their parent star. Joseph Harrington and colleagues studied one such planet and found that it acts almost as a mirror, a bizarre observation as one would expect the planet to absorb at least some heat.
But Heather A. Knutson and co-workers found that a different 'hot Jupiter' can redistribute heat around its surface. The team effectively crudely 'mapped' the temperature distribution across the planet. Their data suggest that energy absorbed by the dayside of the planet can be fairly efficiently redistributed throughout the planet's atmosphere.
CONTACT
Joseph Harrington (University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA) Author paper [2]
Tel: +1 407 823 3416; E-mail: [email protected]
Heather A. Knutson (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA) Author paper [3]
Tel: +1 617 223 1723; E-mail: [email protected]
Adam Burrows (University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 520 621 1795; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Oceanography: Oceanic short circuit (pp 194-197)
Researchers have discovered a 'short circuit' in the circulation of the world's oceans that allows cold waters that sink to the abyss to return to the surface more rapidly than previously thought. Understanding oceanic circulation is important because it transports heat, carbon and nutrients around the globe and therefore plays a central role in Earth's climate.
Ocean mixing in the current that flows around Antarctica has a key role in global ocean circulation as it influences the rate at which water sinking to the deep ocean at high latitudes returns to the surface in the Southern Ocean. But the rates of mixing processes that occur in the current and the induced upwelling are not well known. Alberto C. Naveira Garabato and colleagues studied the spread of helium released from submarine volcanoes to measure the rates of mixing and upwelling in the southwest Atlantic sector of the current.
Their results, presented in this week's Nature, indicate that the rough topography of the ocean floor in this region leads to both rapid mixing across density surfaces and rapid upwelling along density surfaces, which together create a 'short circuit' in the global oceanic overturning circulation.
CONTACT
Alberto C. Naveira Garabato (University of Southampton, UK)
Tel: +44 23 8059 2680; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Materials: Lithium superconducts without pressure (pp 187-189)
Lithium can superconduct in its natural form at extremely low temperatures, a Nature paper reveals. Because the electronic structure of lithium is relatively simple, the new discovery will help those wishing to model superconductivity.
Superconductivity — the flow of electric current without resistance — occurs in many metals at low temperatures. But elements in the alkali metal series of the periodic table of elements have been thought unlikely to superconduct because they are monovalent (each atom can form only one chemical bond).
It's known that lithium, the lightest alkali metal, can superconduct under pressure, but Juha Tuoriniemi and colleagues now show that it can do so at ambient pressure at a very low transition temperature of 0.4 millikelvin.
CONTACT
Juha Tuoriniemi (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland)
Tel: +358 9 451 2974; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] And finally… Gender-specific differences fuel biodiversity (pp 202-205)
Many factors, such as habitat, behaviour and diet, contribute to biological diversity. But researchers now have an unexpected addition to this list — sexual differences. A study of the Anolis lizards of the Greater Antilles, published in this week’s Nature, suggests that morphological differences between males and females are linked to increased biodiversity.
The Anolis lizards of Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Cuba and Hispaniola evolved independently on their respective islands into species that occupy particular niches, such as the short-legged twig dwellers and the long-legged open space dwellers. But males and females of the same species can be very different — in some species the sexes are the same size, but in others adult males can be three times bigger than females.
Marguerite A. Butler and colleagues studied five sexually dimorphic characteristics from male and female adults of different niche specialists living on two of the islands. They find that sexual dimorphism contributes substantially to biodiversity, helping to fuel the bursts of ‘adaptive radiation’ that produced the different niche-adapted species.
Most studies of adaptive radiation ignore sexually dimorphic traits, the authors say. But its place in evolutionary ecology should not be underestimated.
CONTACT
Marguerite A. Butler (University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA)
Tel: +1 808 956 4713; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[7] Chiral magnetic order at surfaces driven by inversion asymmetry (pp 190-193; N&V)
[8] The depth distribution of azimuthal anisotropy in the continental upper mantle (pp 198-201)
[9] Maintaining a behaviour polymorphism by frequency-dependent selection on a single gene (pp 210-212)
[10] The human RNA kinase hClp1 is active on 39 transfer RNA exons and short interfering RNAs (pp 222-226; N&V)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 09 May 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 10 May, but at a later date.***
[11] Prion recognition elements govern nucleation, strain specificity and species barriers
DOI: 10.1038/nature05848
[12] Experimental and theoretical study of mitotic spindle orientation
DOI: 10.1038/nature05786
[13] Disulphide-isomerase-enabled shedding of tumour-associated NKG2D ligands
DOI: 10.1038/nature05768
[14] Redox-mediated substrate recognition by Sdp1 defines a new group of tyrosine phosphatases
DOI: 10.1038/nature05804
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
Canberra: 1
Parkville Victoria: 1
Sydney: 1
AUSTRIA
Vienna: 10
CANADA
Mississauga: 9
Toronto: 9
Vancouver: 1
FINLAND
Helsinki: 5
Vantaa: 5
FRANCE
Grenoble: 14
Paris: 12
GERMANY
Bremen: 4
Dresden: 12
Hamburg: 7
Julich: 7
SPAIN
Oviedo: 13
SWITZERLAND
Villigen: 8
UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge: 1
Dundee: 14
London: 14
Norwich: 4
Oxford: 1
Southampton: 4
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Arizona
Tucson: 3
California
Berkeley: 2, 8
Moffett Field: 3
Mountain View: 3
Stanford: 1
Colorado
Aurora: 1
Florida
Orlando: 2
Hawaii
Honolulu: 6
Illinois
Argonne: 7
Louisiana
Baton Rouge: 1
Maryland
Greenbelt: 2
Massachusetts
Boston: 1
Cambridge: 1, 2, 3, 6, 11
Missouri
St Louis: 6
New Mexico
Albuquerque: 1
New York
Bronx: 1
Ithaca: 2
North Carolina
Durham: 1
Raleigh: 1
Ohio
Toledo: 3
Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh: 1
Texas
College Station: 1
San Antonio: 1
Washington
Seattle: 1, 3
West Virginia
Morgantown: 1
PRESS CONTACTS…
For North America and Canada
Katie McGoldrick, Nature Washington
Tel: +1 202 737 2355; E-mail: [email protected]
For Japan, Korea, China, Singapore and Taiwan
Mika Nakano, Nature Tokyo
Tel: +81 3 3267 8751; E-mail: [email protected]
For the UK/Europe/other countries not listed above
Helen Jamison, Nature London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4658; E-mail [email protected]
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