NATURE AND THE NATURE RESEARCH JOURNALS PRESS RELEASE
For papers that will be published online on 07 October 2007
This press release is copyrighted to the Nature journals mentioned below.
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Materials: Domains of influence – Nature
Fighting off an immune attack – Nature Medicine
Using aspirin to study bacterial infection – Nature Methods
· 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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NOTE: Once a paper is published, the digital object identifier (DOI) number can be used to retrieve the abstract and full text from the journal web site (abstracts are available to everyone, full text is available only to subscribers). To do this, add the DOI to the following URL: http://dx.doi.org/ (For example, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng730). For more information about DOIs and Advance Online Publication, see http://www.nature.com/ng/aop/.
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] Materials: Domains of influence
DOI: 10.1038/nature06165
The motion of domain walls — critical to many applications involving ferroelectric materials — is more accurately modelled in a study to be published online this week in Nature.
Memory devices are often based upon the polarization of a ferroelectric material by an electric field. Recording a piece of information in this way involves increasing the size of a region with one polarity at the expense of those having opposite polarity, and hence the movement of the domain walls separating these regions — a process that is still poorly understood at the microscopic level. Here, Andrew Rappe and colleagues report multi-scale simulations that reproduce domain-wall motion observed experimentally, and which — in contrast to previous models — suggest a nucleation process that is energetically realistic.
These findings provide microscopic insight into how changes in nucleus shape and polarization profile can dramatically lower activation barriers.
Author contact:
Andrew Rappe (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA)
Tel: +1 215 898 8313; E-mail: [email protected]
*********************Nature MEDICINE******************
(http://www.nature.com/naturemedicine)
[2] Fighting off an immune attack
DOI: 10.1038/nm1652
In the November issue of Nature Medicine, Wayne Hancock and colleagues report a way to inhibit the immune system, using a class of FDA-approved drugs called HDAC inhibitors.
Over-activation of the immune system can cause a variety of problems, such as inflammatory bowel disease and organ transplant rejection. The researchers show that HDAC inhibitors activate regulatory T cells, which suppress the rest of the immune system. The HDAC inhibitors decreased inflammatory bowel disease and prevented rejection of heart and pancreatic grafts.
These findings suggest that HDAC inhibitors, which are already FDA-approved for cancer therapy, may be useful in fighting diseases associated with immune activation, including autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis.
Author contact:
Wayne Hancock (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, PA, USA)
Tel: +1 215 590 8709; E-mail: [email protected]
Other papers from Nature Medicine to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
[3] Stat5a is epigenetically silenced by the tyrosine kinase NPM/ALK and acts as tumor suppressor by reciprocally inhibiting expression of NPM/ALK
DOI: 10.1038/nm1659
****************************NATURE METHODS**********************
[4] Using aspirin to study bacterial infection
DOI: 10.1038/nmeth1107
A method using aspirin to turn on expression of a bacterial gene inside an infected host provides an easy and safe way to study host-pathogen interactions, suggests a report online this week in Nature Methods.
Bacteria express a range of different genes when they infect a host organism. These genes are expressed at different times and have distinct effects on the virulence of the microorganism. Studying this process has been hampered by a lack of methods to selectively adjust the expression of bacterially expressed genes in the whole animal in a tightly controlled and safe way.
Eduardo Santero and colleagues describe how a gene expression control circuit that responds to acetyl salicylic acid (aspirin) can be incorporated into bacteria and used to control the expression of a specific gene. As a proof-of-principle they validated their method by engineering Salmonella bacteria to express an enzyme that converts an innocuous chemical to a cytotoxic compound. By infecting mice with the engineered Salmonella they showed that aspirin administration was able to turn on expression of the inserted gene in Salmonella infected cells and kill them.
This proof-of-concept demonstration indicates that the method should be broadly applicable to the study of host-pathogen interactions if it is used to control natural or engineered bacterial genes.
Author contact:
Eduardo Santero (Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain)
Tel: +34 95 434 9160; E-mail: [email protected]
Other papers from Nature Methods to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
[5] Comprehensive analysis of diverse ribonucleoprotein complexes
DOI: 10.1038/nmeth1101
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Items from other Nature journals to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
NATURE CHEMICAL BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/nchembio)
[6] ATP-competitive inhibitors of the mitotic kinesin KSP that function via an allosteric mechanism
DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.2007.34
Nature PHYSICS (http://www.nature.com/naturephysics)
[7] Optically detected coherent spin dynamics of a single electron in a quantum dot
DOI: 10.1038/nphys736
[8] Cross-sectional imaging of spin injection into a semiconductor
DOI: 10.1038/nphys734
NATURE GENETICS (http://www.nature.com/naturegenetics)
[9] Network modeling links breast cancer susceptibility and centrosome dysfunction
DOI: 10.1038/ng.2007.2
[10] Ancestral reconstruction of segmental duplications reveals punctuated cores of human genome evolution
DOI: 10.1038/ng.2007.9
Nature NEUROSCIENCE (http://www.nature.com/natureneuroscience)
[11] Sensory processing in Drosophila antennal lobe increases reliability and separability of ensemble odor representations
DOI: 10.1038/nn1976
[12] Figure-ground mechanisms provide structure for selective attention
DOI: 10.1038/nn1989
[13] Transcriptional repression coordinates the temporal switch from motor to serotonergic neurogenesis
DOI: 10.1038/nn1985
Nature IMMUNOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/natureimmunology)
[14] Identification of clonogenic common Flt3+M-CSFR+ plasmacytoid and dendritic cell progenitors in mouse bone marrow
DOI: 10.1038/ni1518
[15] Development of plasmacytoid and conventional dendritic cell subtypes from single precursor cells derived in vitro and in vivo
DOI: 10.1038/ni1522
NATURE CELL BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/naturecellbiology)
[16] SNARE proteins mediate fusion between cytosolic lipid droplets and are implicated in insulin sensitivity
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1648
Nature STRUCTURAL & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/natstructmolbiol)
[17] Molecular driving forces determining potassium channel slow inactivation
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb1309
[18] Conformational dynamics of the KcsA potassium channel governs gating properties
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb1311
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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
Parkville: 15
CHINA
Beijing: 9
FRANCE
Paris: 13
Strasbourg: 8
GERMANY
Braunschweig: 4
Hamburg: 9
Munich: 15
Regensburg: 8
GREECE
Athens: 13
ISRAEL
Haifa: 9
ITALY
Bari: 10
JAPAN
Akita: 14
KOREA
Busan: 15
Pohang: 1
NETHERLANDS
Amsterdam: 15
SPAIN
Barcelona: 9
Seville: 4
SWEDEN
Gothenburg: 16
SWITZERLAND
Bellinzona: 14
Zurich: 18
UNITED KINGDOM
London: 13
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
La Jolla: 10, 18
San Francisco: 6
Santa Barbara: 7
Illinois
Chicago: 17
Indiana
Bloomington: 10
Maryland
Baltimore: 12
Frederick: 9
Massachusetts
Boston: 9, 11
Michigan
Ann Arbor: 9
New York
New York: 5, 9
Ohio
Columbus: 9
Pennsylvania
Collegeville: 6
Philadelphia: 1, 2, 3, 9
West Point: 6
Texas
Dallas: 2
Virginia
Charlottesville: 17
Washington
Seattle: 5, 9, 10
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 Cell Biology (London)
Bernd Pulverer
Tel: +44 20 7843 4892; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Chemical Biology (Boston)
Andrea Garvey
Tel: +1 617 475 9241, E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Genetics (New York)
Orli Bahcall
Tel: +1 212 726 9311; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Immunology (New York)
Laurie Dempsey
Tel: +1 212 726 9372; 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 Photonics (Tokyo))
Oliver Graydon
Tel: +81 3 3267 8776; 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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