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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.451 NO.7174 DATED 03 JANUARY 2008
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Carbon balance: Autumn warming boosts carbon loss
Tumour incidence: When three is better than two
Metabolic engineering: Brewing better biofuels
Magnetism: Poles apart in spin ice
Astrophysics: Newborn extrasolar planet still tied to parent star
Arctic climate: Warming up
Cancer: Breast cancer goes NUMB
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Carbon balance: Autumn warming boosts carbon loss (pp 49-52; N&V)
A warm spring in the Northern Hemisphere means that plants absorb more carbon as their growing season gets off to an early start, but what happens as autumn becomes steadily warmer as well? Not what you might expect, says a paper in this week’s Nature - although a balmy autumn allows plants’ greenery to flourish for longer, carbon uptake tails off and instead escapes into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
Shilong Piao and colleagues found a trend over the past twenty years towards an earlier autumn-to-winter build-up of carbon dioxide in northern ecosystems, suggesting that the period of net carbon uptake is becoming shorter. They use satellite observations of vegetation greenery and biosphere modelling to explain this response to autumnal warming: although plants’ respiration (emitting carbon dioxide) and photosynthesis (storing carbon dioxide) are both stepped up, the former outstrips the latter to give a net loss of carbon.
What’s more, this loss may offset much of the increased uptake of carbon dioxide during spring. Eastern Asia and North America are both experiencing strong autumn warming, which may account for Eurasia’s larger carbon sink, suggest the authors.
CONTACT
Shilong Piao (Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l'Environnement, CEA/CNRS, Paris, France)
Tel: +33 1 6908 3876; Tel: [email protected]
John Miller (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, CO, USA) N&V Author
Tel: +1 303 497 7739; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Tumour incidence: When three is better than two (pp 73-75; N&V)
People with Down’s syndrome seem to be less susceptible to cancers - an observation that may at least partly derive from their having an extra copy of the chromosome responsible for the syndrome, chromosome 21. A paper in this week’s Nature puts this idea to the test in mouse models of Down’s syndrome and finds that the animals are indeed less likely to develop colon cancer.
Roger Reeves and colleagues pinpoint a gene, known as Ets2, on chromosome 21 that seems to confer protection in these mice. The authors explain their finding as a ‘dosage’ effect: having three copies of chromosome 21 instead of the normal two means that more Ets2 protein is produced. This came as a surprise, because Ets2 is generally thought to encourage tumours to grow.
The discovery could be exploited in developing a drug to promote cancer resistance, suggest the authors.
CONTACT
Roger Reeves (The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA)
Tel: +1 410 955 6621; E-mail: [email protected]
David Threadgill (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA) N&V Author
Tel: +1 919 843 6472; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Metabolic engineering: Brewing better biofuels (pp 86-89)
The search is on for more efficient ways to produce ‘higher’ alcohols as an alternative to petroleum, given that fossil fuels are diminishing and taking their toll on the environment. Higher alcohols, such as isobutanol, are promising potential biofuels, as they have higher energy densities and lower hygroscopicities than ethanol - but higher alcohols cannot be synthesized economically using native microorganisms.
A paper in this week’s Nature describes the re-engineering of Escherichia coli to produce several higher alcohols (including isobutanol and 1-butanol) from glucose, a renewable carbon source. James Liao and his colleagues showed that it was possible to divert intermediates from the amino acid biosynthetic pathway to generate the desired alcohols. The hope is that this strategy could be used to generate large quantities of higher alcohols via microbial fermentation, which may be more efficient than processes that require acres of sugarcane, maize, or switchgrass.
CONTACT
James Liao (University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 310 825 1656; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Magnetism: Poles apart in spin ice (pp 42-45; N&V)
Schoolchildren are taught that a bar magnet has a north and a south pole and that one can’t exist without the other - not so, says a paper in this week’s Nature, which sets out to show that isolated poles, or ‘monopoles’, can be spotted relatively easily if you know where and how to look for them.
Shivaji Sondhi and colleagues were intrigued by the seeming absence of magnetic monopoles when electric ones - electrons and protons, for example - are everywhere. They investigated a class of exotic magnets known as ‘spin ice’ materials and found that their magnetic poles exist in a lattice of deconfined pairs, which to all intents and purposes are free monopoles. But, unlike free electrical charges in a photoelectric current, for example, they cannot escape the material.
Even so, it may turn out to be possible to create and manipulate monopole currents along circuits within the material. Magnetic monopoles undergoing a liquid-gas transition could account for previously unexplained behaviour seen in spin ice in magnetic fields.
CONTACT
Shivaji Sondhi (Princeton University, NJ, USA)
Tel: +1 609 333 9745; E-mail: [email protected]
Roderich Moessner (Max-Planck-Institut fuer Physik komplexer Systeme, Dresden, Germany) Co-Author
Tel: +49 176 762 19 488; E-mail: [email protected]
Oleg Tchernyshyov (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA) N&V Author
Tel: +1 410 516 8586; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Astrophysics: Newborn extrasolar planet still tied to parent star (pp 38-41)
Planets are believed to form within disks of dust and gas around newly born stars, so young planets can tell us something about how their planetary systems were formed. Disappointingly, no youthful planets have been spotted beyond the Solar System - until now. A paper in this week’s Nature reports the discovery of a newborn extrasolar planet and shows that it formed rapidly after the birth of its nearby star.
Johny Setiawan and colleagues found the giant young planet still linked to the dusty disk surrounding its parent star. It orbits the star every three-and-a-half days or so, inside the inner rim of the disk. The astronomers estimate that the age of the new planetary system is about ten million years, which is only about 0.2 per cent of the age of our own Solar System.
The authors point out that their find provides the first observational constraint on the timescale of planet formation.
CONTACT
Johny Setiawan (Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany)
Tel: +49 622 152 8326; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Arctic climate: Warming up (pp 53-56)
Near-surface warming in the Arctic has been almost twice as large as the global average over the past few decades. A paper in Nature this week indicates that this excessive warming was not confined to the lowermost part of the atmosphere, suggesting that processes that cause warming aloft may have had a significant role in the so-called ‘Arctic amplification’.
Although most greenhouse gases are fairly uniformly distributed across the globe, the temperature response is larger in polar than equatorial regions. The causes of this temperature amplification remain uncertain, but they may include feedbacks associated with retreating snow and ice cover, as well as changes in atmospheric circulation and cloud cover.
Rune G. Graversen and colleagues examined the vertical structure of temperature change in the Arctic during the late twentieth century using a data set based on modelling and observations. They found evidence for temperature amplification well above the surface throughout the year, as well as evidence that maximum warming occurred above the surface in summer and winter. Feedbacks associated with retreating snow and ice are unlikely to be the main cause of this warming aloft. Instead, their analysis indicates that changes in atmospheric heat transport into the Arctic may have played an important part, particularly in summer.
CONTACT
Rune G. Graversen (Stockholm University, Sweden)
Tel: +46 8 16 4344; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] Cancer: Breast cancer goes NUMB (pp 76-80)
A protein called NUMB has a crucial role in keeping breast cancer at bay. New research in this week’s Nature shows how this protein acts to preserve the function of p53, another protein that is known to protect against cancer.
It is already known that many cases of breast cancer are characterized by the loss of the NUMB protein, which normally functions to help determine how different cell types develop. Now, researchers led by Pier Paolo Di Fiore describe how NUMB helps to stave off cancer by binding to p53 and a third protein, HDM2, which usually degrades p53 and prevents its cancer-busting activity.
By protecting p53 in this way, NUMB is itself acting as an anti-cancer protein, say the researchers, who made their discovery by studying a range of different cells in the test tube, including human breast cells. This is highlighted by the fact that cancers that feature abnormally low levels of NUMB tend to be particularly aggressive, they add.
CONTACT
Pier Paolo Di Fiore (The FIRC Institute for Molecular Oncology, Milan, Italy)
Tel: +39 02 5743 03257; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE
[8] Effects of acoustic waves on stick-slip in granular media and implications for earthquakes (pp 57-60)
[9] TRPC channel activation by extracellular thioredoxin (pp 69-72)
[10] Poly(ADP-ribose)-binding zinc finger motifs in DNA repair/checkpoint proteins (pp 81-85)
[11] Distinct domains of tRNA synthetase recognize the same base pair (pp 90-93)
[12] Structure of a tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase splicing factor bound to a group I intron RNA (pp 94-97)
[13] Structure of the sulphiredoxin-peroxiredoxin complex reveals an essential repair embrace (pp 98-101)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 02 January 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 03 January, but at a later date.***
[14] Predicting expression patterns from regulatory sequence in Drosophila segmentation
DOI: 10.1038/nature06496
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.
BELGIUM
Wilrijk: 1
CANADA
Quebec: 1
Saskatchewan: 1
CHINA
Beijing: 1
FINLAND
Helsinki: 1
FRANCE
Gif-sur-Yvette: 1
Thiverval-Grignon: 1
GERMANY
Dresden: 4
Heidelberg: 5
Jena: 1
ISRAEL
Rehovot: 14
ITALY
Milan: 7
SWEDEN
Lund: 1
Stockholm: 6
Uppsala: 1
UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge: 10
Hull: 9
Leeds: 9
Oxford: 4
South Mimms: 10
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
La Jolla: 11
Los Angeles: 3
Santa Cruz: 8
Indiana
West Lafayette: 12
Maryland
Baltimore: 2
New Hampshire
Durham: 1
New Jersey
Princeton: 1
New Mexico
Los Alamos: 8
New York
New York: 14
North Carolina
Winston-Salem: 13
Ohio
Columbus: 2
Pennsylvania
University Park: 8
Texas
Austin: 12
Washington
Seattle: 8
Wisconsin
Madison: 8
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For North America and Canada
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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
Rachel Twinn, Nature London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4658; E-mail [email protected]
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