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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.450 NO.7167 DATED 08 NOVEMBER 2007
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Genetics: Drosophila dozen is a coup for genome team
Atmospheric science: Detecting ozone intrusions
Planetary science: Saturn’s radio clock
Development: How the body builds an asymmetric aorta
Quantum physics: The perfect couple
And finally…Be not afraid
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
Editorial contacts: While the best contacts for stories will always be the authors themselves, in some cases the Nature editor who handled the paper will be available for comment if an author is unobtainable. Editors are contactable via Ruth Francis on +44 20 7843 4562. Feel free to get in touch with Nature's press contacts in London, Washington and Tokyo (as listed at the end of this release) with any general editorial inquiry.
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[1] – [8] Genetics: Drosophila dozen is a coup for genome team (pp 186-241; N&V)
An international team of geneticists has completed one of the most remarkable feats of genome sequencing to date — compiling a catalogue of the DNA sequences of 12 different species of fruitfly.
The sequences, unveiled by the Drosophila 12 Genomes Consortium, will allow fruitfly researchers to delve deeper into the genetic secrets of one of the most important laboratory species in biology. The research involved sequencing the genomes of 10 additional Drosophila species, to go with the published genetic sequences for D. pseudoobscura and the famous D. melanogaster, which is used in a huge range of genetic studies.
In an accompanying paper, geneticists led by consortium member Manolis Kellis begin the task of discovering the important elements of the dozen genomes, which together represent very closely related species, but also span a wide swathe of fruitflies' evolutionary history.
The two research articles are part of a package of fruitfly-related content in this week's Nature. In two separate studies, researchers including Brian Oliver, Yu Zhang and David Sturgill study Drosophila's sex chromosomes and genes expressed differently in the two sexes, whereas elsewhere in the issue are reviews discussing the fruitfly's contribution to our understanding of neuroscience, homeostasis, body size and shape, and more.
CONTACT
Author paper [1]
Norbert Perrimon (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 432 7672; E-mail: [email protected]
Author paper [2]
Thomas Lecuit (Developmental Biology Institute of Marseilles, France)
Tel: +33 491 26 96 20; [email protected]
Author paper [3]
Leslie B. Vosshall (The Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA)
Tel: +1 212 327 7236; E-mail: [email protected]
Author paper [4]
John T. Lis (Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA)
Tel: +1 607 255 2442; E-mail: [email protected]
Author paper [5]
Andrew Clark (Cornell University, Ithaca NY, USA)
Tel: +1 607 255 0527; E-mail: [email protected]
Drosophila 12 Genomes Consortium
E-mail: [email protected]
Author paper [6]
Manolis Kellis (Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 253 2419; E-mail: [email protected]
N&V author
Ewan Birney (The European Bioinformatics Inst, Cambridge, UK)
Tel: +44 1223 494420; E-mail: [email protected]
Author papers [7] & [8]
Brian Oliver (National Institutes of Health, NIDDK, Bethesda, MD, USA)
Tel: +1 301 496 5494; E-mail: [email protected]
[9] Atmospheric science: Detecting ozone intrusions (pp 281-284)
Detecting the transport of ozone from the upper to the lower atmosphere could become easier thanks to new discoveries about how the gas moves through our skies. So-called 'ozone intrusions' from higher altitudes could be monitored using a relatively simple radar instrument called a windprofiler, the research suggests.
Depending on its altitude, ozone can be either friend or foe. In the stratosphere, it forms the ozone layer, which fends off harmful ultraviolet solar rays. But under certain conditions this ozone can descend into the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere, where it is a pollutant that damages forests, crops and human health.
In this week's Nature, researchers led by Wayne Hocking report that such ozone-intrusion events are associated with relatively sudden changes in the altitude of the boundary between the troposphere and the stratosphere (called the tropopause), which is usually found at an altitude of 8–10 kilometres. They made the discovery by releasing balloon-borne ozone-detecting instruments into the skies above Quebec and Ontario, while measuring tropopause height using windprofilers.
CONTACT
Wayne Hocking (University of Western Ontario, North London, Ontario, Canada)
Tel: +1 519 657 7822; E-mail: [email protected]
[10] Planetary science: Saturn’s radio clock (pp 265-267; N&V)
The periodicity in the radio emission of Saturn, generally used as a proxy for its rotation rate, is modulated by the solar wind — a stream of charged particles flowing from the upper atmosphere of the Sun. These findings, reported in this week’s Nature, indicate that an external source is having an influence on the estimated speed of Saturn’s rotation.
Saturn’s rotation period was calculated initially from bursts of long-wavelength radio emissions to be about 10 h and 39 min, compared to the Earth’s rotation period, which is 23 h and 56 min. Later observations, however, revealed that this period varies by up to 6 minutes on a timescale of several months to years.
Philippe Zarka and colleagues looked at these fluctuations and developed a method to measure the radio period to an accuracy of less than 1% on timescales of 20–30 days. They show that their probable cause is the variation of the solar wind velocity near Saturn, but no correlation was found with the solar wind density, dynamic pressure or magnetic field.
CONTACT
Philippe Zarka (Observatoire de Paris, Meudon, France)
Tel: +33 1 45 07 78 19; E-mail: [email protected]
Margaret Galland Kivelson (University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 310 825 3435; E-mail: [email protected]
[11] Development: How the body builds an asymmetric aorta (pp 285-288; N&V)
The aortic arch — the structure formed by the body’s largest artery, the aorta, as it leaves the heart — lies on the left of the body’s midline, defying the symmetry found in most bodily structures. However, it forms from a symmetrical network of blood vessels present during development. New research published in this week's Nature helps to fill in the genetic pieces of this developmental jig-saw puzzle.
Hiroshi Hamada and colleagues studied mice lacking a gene called Pitx2, and found that these mice end up with an aortic arch found randomly on either the left or right side. They conclude that Pitx2 expression does not directly lead to asymmetric blood-vessel development, but rather sets up an asymmetric blood supply that differentially influences the expression of growth factors at different locations in the developing vascular system.
Thus, this asymmetric blood flow prompts a relatively innocuous blood vessel called the sixth branchial arch artery to develop into the main vessel through which all of the body’s arterial blood passes on its journey around the body.
CONTACT
Hiroshi Hamada (Osaka University, Japan)
Tel: +81 6 879 7994; E-mail: [email protected]
Simon Conway (Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN, USA) N&V author
E-mail: [email protected]
Please note we are currently unable to provide a phone number for this author – check the press site for updates.
[12] & [13] Quantum physics: The perfect couple (pp 268-271; 272-276)
Understanding the interaction between light and matter, and using it for quantum applications, is a step closer, thanks to two papers in Nature this week.
Cavity quantum electrodynamics uses trapped atoms in an enclosed field region to enhance this interaction at a microscopic level. Previous studies have demonstrated so-called 'strong coupling', a regime in which the radiative properties of individual atoms are intimately linked to the state of the optical field in the cavity.
Two teams led by Tilman Esslinger and Jakob Reichel now add a new ingredient to cavity quantum electrodynamics — the atoms are cooled to form a special state known as a Bose–Einstein condensate, which causes them to interact with the light field in an identical manner. This may open the way for applications in quantum communication and information processing.
CONTACT
Author paper [12]
Tilman Esslinger (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland)
Tel: +41 44 633 2340; E-mail: [email protected]
Author paper [13]
Jakob Reichel (Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France)
Tel: +33 1 44 32 33 79; E-mail: [email protected]
[14] And finally…Be not afraid (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature06287
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 07 November 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 November, but at a later date.***
The innate tendency of mice to shy away from the smell of danger can be switched off by simply turning off certain receptors in the nose, even though the same mice can detect the smells and be taught to avoid them, says research published online this week in Nature. In the experiments, mice lacking these receptors were undeterred by the scent of rotting food or predators, which normal mice stay well clear of.
In mammals, odours activate large numbers of olfactory receptors, but the logic of this complex system is unclear. Hitoshi Sakano and colleagues here demonstrate a function for a small set of molecules in the olfactory bulb. In experiments, mice lacking these receptors do not react normally to aversive smells, such as rotting food or the usually fearful scent of fox or snow leopard, but can be conditioned to be averse to them. This suggests the presence of dedicated systems for innate versus learned responses.
CONTACT
Hitoshi Sakano (University of Tokyo, Japan)
Tel: +81 3 5689 7239; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[15] The remarkable metal catalysed olefin metathesis reaction
(pp 243-251)
[16] Stability of organic carbon in deep soil layers controlled by fresh carbon supply
(pp 277-280)
[17] Drosophila hygrosensation requires the TRP channels water witch and nanchung
(pp 294-298)
[18] Roquin represses autoimmunity by limiting inducible T-cell co-stimulator messenger RNA
(pp 299-303)
[19] JHDM1B/FBXL10 is a nucleolar protein that represses transcription of ribosomal RNA genes (pp 309-313)
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: 18
Melbourne: 5
Perth: 18
AUSTRIA
Graz: 10
BELGIUM
Brussels: 6
BRAZIL
Puerto Alegre: 5
Rio de Janeiro: 5
CANADA
Downsview: 9
London: 9
Montreal: 9
Toronto: 9
Winnipeg: 5
CHINA
Beijing: 5
DENMARK
Copenhagen: 6
Odense: 5
ESTONIA
Tartu: 6
FRANCE
Clermont-Ferrand: 16
Laon: 16
Marseille: 2
Nice: 1
Palaiseau: 12
Paris: 13
Thiverval-Grignon: 16
GERMANY
Berlin: 18
Leipzig: 5
Munich: 13
ITALY
Bari: 5
JAPAN
Osaka: 11
Tokyo: 5
KOREA
Gwangju: 17
SINGAPORE
Singapore: 18
SPAIN
Barcelona: 5
Madrid: 5
SWEDEN
Umea: 5
Uppsala: 5
SWIZERLAND
Zurich: 12
UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge: 6, 12
Fife: 5
London: 11
Manchester: 5
Oxford: 5
Sheffield: 5
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Arizona
Tempe: 7
Tucson: 5
California
Berkeley: 5, 6
Davis: 5
Santa Cruz; 6
Stanford: 5
Connecticut
Middletown: 6
Georgia
Athens: 5
Illinois
Urbana: 17
Iowa
Iowa City: 17
Indiana
Bloomington: 5, 6
Maryland
Beltsville: 5
Bethesda: 5, 7
College Park: 5
Massachusetts
Beverly: 5, 6
Boston: 1, 5
Cambridge: 5, 6
Chestnut Hill: 15
Missouri
St Louis: 5
New Jersey
Newark: 6
New York
Cold Spring Harbour: 6
Ithaca: 4, 5, 6
New York: 3, 19
Rochester: 5
Syracuse: 5
North Carolina
Chapel Hill: 5
Raleigh: 5
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia: 8
Rhode Island
Providence: 5
Virginia
Ashburn: 5
Wisconsin
Madison: 6
PRESS CONTACTS…
For North America and Canada
Katie McGoldrick, Nature Washington
Tel: +1 202 737 2355; E-mail: [email protected]
From 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
Ruth Francis, Nature London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4562; E-mail [email protected]
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