NATURE AND THE NATURE RESEARCH JOURNALS PRESS RELEASE
For papers that will be published online on 27 January 2008. This press release is copyrighted to the Nature journals mentioned below.
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Microbial ecology: A generalist appetite for marine carbon - Nature
When microbes ruled the Earth - Nature Geoscience
Making waves in the ionosphere - Nature Geoscience
Amyloid inhibitors are aggregates too - Nature Chemical Biology
An amicable separation - Nature Nanotechnology
Mother knows best - Nature Medicine
Sleep onset and duration uncoupled - Nature Neuroscience
· 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.
PICTURES: To obtain artwork from any of the journals, you must first obtain permission from the copyright holder (if named) or author of the research paper in question (if not).
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] Microbial ecology: A generalist appetite for marine carbon
DOI: 10.1038/nature06513
The oceanic contribution to the global carbon cycle relies heavily on bacterial processing of many different forms of dissolved carbon. A paper in this week’s Nature looks at how coastal communities of bacteria coordinate this monumental task.
Mary Ann Moran and her colleagues used ‘metagenomics’ techniques to reveal that these communities contain a range of bacterial species capable of metabolizing a wide variety of organic carbon compounds - including one released by marine algae and another produced by rotting plant debris.
The discovery that coastal microbial populations are dominated by such ‘generalist’ bacteria should help predictive modelling of carbon turnover in a changing coastal ocean, say the authors.
Author contact:
Mary Ann Moran (University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA)
Tel: +1 706 542 6481; E-mail: [email protected]
Other papers from Nature to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
[2] Arc-parallel flow in the mantle wedge beneath Costa Rica and Nicaragua
DOI: 10.1038/nature06550
****************************************NATURE GEOSCIENCE******************************************
[3] When microbes ruled the Earth
DOI: 10.1038/ngeo107
Biological signatures from microbes that lived billions of years ago may help resolve the long-standing debate regarding the earliest life on Earth, according to a study published online in Nature Geoscience. Traces of the microbes have been detected in ancient rocks using nanoscale spectroscopic techniques.
Kevin Lepot and colleagues studied layered rocks called stromatolites from the interior of Australia, which were formed 2.7 billion years ago. Although stromatolites are often considered evidence of early life, some can have a non-biological origin. However, the team identified molecules and microscopic structures, including the oldest crystals of the mineral aragonite found to date, that proved these rocks were associated with microbes.
Applied to older, more controversial stromatolites, the technique should permit the detection of the oldest life on Earth.
Author contact:
Kevin Lepot (Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, France)
Tel: +33 1 44 27 61 47; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Making waves in the ionosphere
DOI: 10.1038/ngeo109
Lightning in the tropics produces radiowaves that can disturb the Earth’s ionosphere, according to satellite observations published online this week in Nature Geoscience. The findings suggest a previously unknown influence of thunderstorms on this uppermost part of the atmosphere, which stretches between 80 and 1,000 km above the surface of the Earth.
Jean-Jacques Berthelier and colleagues analysed measurements of the DEMETER satellite that is stationed in a polar orbit at 600 km altitude and was designed originally in the hope of detecting earthquake precursor signals. The researchers observed spatial bunching of plasma waves along with an acceleration of ions where the radiowaves from lightning hit.
Author contact:
Jean-Jacques Berthelier (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Saint Maur des Fosses, France)
Tel. +33 1 45 11 42 42; E-mail: [email protected]
Other papers from Nature Geoscience to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
[5] Importance of post-seismic viscous relaxation in southern Iceland
DOI: 10.1038/ngeo105
*************************************NATURE CHEMICAL BIOLOGY ***********************************
(http://www.nature.com/nchembio)
[6] Amyloid inhibitors are aggregates too
DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.65
A new understanding of the way protein inhibitors work may have major implications in the development of drugs for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. Scientists have discovered a significant feature in the way that known amyloid inhibitors work, according to a paper to be published online this week in Nature Chemical Biology.
Several neurodegenerative diseases may be caused by the collection of various proteins into large clumps of disordered proteins, known as fibrils. A common strategy to try to find cures for these diseases is to search for molecules that can prevent formation of these fibrils or even cause them to break apart.
Brian Shoichet and colleagues demonstrate that the molecules that have been identified so far in this search act in an unusual manner: the compounds themselves form large groups, known as aggregates, which then act on the proteins to prevent the undesired clumping. The authors also found that other compounds not previously identified as amyloid inhibitors but known to form aggregates also stop the proteins from clumping up. This result will require a significant re-evaluation of the way in which drug developers approach Alzheimer’s disease.
Author contact:
Brian Shoichet (University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA. USA)
Tel: +1 415 514 4126; E-mail: [email protected]
Other papers from Nature Chemical Biology to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
[7] Engineering sulfotransferases to modify heparan sulfate
DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.66
**************************************NATURE NANOTECHNOLOGY***********************************
[8] An amicable separation
DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2007.451
Graphene — a carbon-based nanomaterial known for its unique electronic, thermal and mechanical properties — can form stable dispersions in water without the need for additional chemical stabilizers. The research, to be published online this week in Nature Nanotechnology, has practical implications for the development of coatings to reduce static build-up on materials.
Graphene is the name given to the individual sheets of carbon, just one atom thick, that stack together to form graphite. Keeping graphene sheets separate from one another is a difficult task because they tend to stick together, forming larger structures that are not particularly useful. Now, however, using a sequence of chemical reactions, a team led by Gordon Wallace and Dan Li have shown how aqueous dispersions of well-separated graphene sheets can be made from graphite — an abundant and inexpensive starting material.
Rather than relying on either polymer or surfactant stabilizers, their approach maximizes the electrostatic charge on the graphene sheets, ensuring that they repel one another instead of clumping together. This low-cost approach offers the potential for large-scale production of stable graphene colloids that can be processed using well-established solution-based techniques — such as filtration or spraying — to make conductive films. In addition to antistatic coatings, these materials are expected to have applications in flexible transparent electronics, high-performance composites and nanomedicine.
Author contact:
Gordon Wallace (University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia)
Tel: +61 2 4221 3127; E-mail: [email protected]
Dan Li (University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia)
Tel: +61 2 4221 3319; E-mail: [email protected]
Other papers from Nature Nanotechnology to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
[9] Reclaiming academia from post-academia
DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2008.11
*******************************************Nature MEDICINE********************************************
(http://www.nature.com/naturemedicine)
[10] Mother knows best
DOI: 10.1038/nm1718
Breast feeding may help protect babies against allergic asthma reports a paper in this week’s Nature Medicine. Airborne allergen is able to pass from mother to child through breast milk, which creates a tolerance to the allergen.
Allergic asthma affects 300 million people worldwide and is characterized by obstruction of the respiratory pathways in response to allergen exposure. Its prevalence has increased in recent decades, probably due to changes in environmental factors. Indeed, exposure to environmental antigens during infancy reduces the likelihood of developing asthma.
Valerie Julia and her colleagues investigated whether exposing lactating mice to an airborne allergen—ovalbumin—affected asthma development in the offspring. They found that ovalbumin was efficiently transferred from the mother to the neonate through the milk, leading to the development of immunological tolerance. Tolerance induction relied on the presence of transforming growth factor-beta and was mediated by regulatory CD4+ T lymphocytes, but did not require the transfer of immunoglobulins through the milk.
Breast milk-mediated transfer of an antigen to the neonate can result in oral tolerance induction, leading to antigen-specific protection from allergic asthma. These observations may pave the way for the design of new strategies to prevent the development of allergic diseases.
Author contact:
Valerie Julia (INSERM-UNSA, Valbonne, France)
Tel. +33 4 93 95 77 85;E-mail: [email protected]
Other papers from Nature Medicine to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
[11] Dual role of proapoptotic BAD in insulin secretion and beta cell survival
DOI: 10.1038/nm1717
[12] Oxidative damage-induced inflammation initiates age-related macular degeneration
DOI: 10.1038/nm1709
************************************NATURE NEUROSCIENCE ***********************************
(http://www.nature.com/natureneuroscience)
[13] Sleep onset and duration uncoupled
DOI: 10.1038/nn2046
Receptors producing synaptic inhibition regulate the time it takes to get to sleep, according to new research published in Nature Neuroscience. This work begins to dissect the biological mechanisms underlying the differences between various types of insomnia.
Drosophila are used as a model for understanding sleep because flies replicate many of the behavioral characteristics of mammalian sleep. This research has not yet produced evidence that the pathways targeted by insomnia drugs in humans are necessary for sleep in flies, however, casting doubt of the relevance of fly sleep as a model for human sleep.
Using genetics and pharmacology, Leslie Griffith and colleagues demonstrate that the biophysical properties of a particular inhibitory receptor influenced both falling and staying asleep in flies, but in different ways. Manipulating receptor desensitization only affected sleep onset, uncoupling the control of sleep initiation and maintenance.
This work further confirms the validity of Drosophila as a model of mammalian sleep and provides a biological explanation for a specific type of insomnia. Future studies exploring other aspects of sleep regulation involving inhibitory receptors may assist in better targeting of drugs designed to specifically influence one particular aspect of sleep without unnecessarily affecting other aspects.
Author contact:
Leslie Griffith (Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 781 736 3125; E-mail: [email protected]
Other papers from Nature Neuroscience to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
[14] Regulation of axonal and dendritic growth by the extracellular calcium-sensing receptor
DOI: 10.1038/nn2044
[15] Signals and noise in an inhibitory interneuron diverge to control activity in nearby retinal ganglion cellsDOI: 10.1038/nn2045
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Items from other Nature journals to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
NATURE PHOTONICS (http://www.nature.com/nphoton)
[16] Localization in silicon nanophotonic slow-light waveguides
DOI:10.1038/nphoton.2007.278
[17] Optical phase conjugation for turbidity suppression in biological samples
DOI:10.1038/nphoton.2007.297
Nature PHYSICS (http://www.nature.com/naturephysics)
[18] Ultrafast X-ray study of dense-liquid-jet flow dynamics using structure-tracking velocimetry
DOI: 10.1038/nphys840
[19] Towards the zero-surface-tension limit in granular fingering instability
DOI: 10.1038/nphys834
[20] Cruising through molecular bound-state manifolds with radiofrequency
DOI: 10.1038/nphys838
NATURE MATERIALS (http://www.nature.com/naturematerials)
[21] Direct access to thermally stable and highly crystalline mesoporous transition-metal oxides with uniform pores
DOI: 10.1038/nmat2111
Nature BIOTECHNOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/naturebiotechnology)
[22] Human embryonic stem cell derivation from poor-quality embryos
DOI: 10.1038/nbt1378
[23] Exploiting the mosaic structure of trans-acyltransferase polyketide synthases for natural product discovery and pathway dissection
DOI: 10.1038/nbt1379
NATURE GENETICS (http://www.nature.com/naturegenetics)
[24] A single gene network accurately predicts phenotypic effects of gene perturbation in Caenorhabditis elegans
DOI: 10.1038/ng.2007.70
[25] A reduction of mitochondrial DNA molecules during embryogenesis explains the rapid segregation of genotypes
DOI: 10.1038/ng.2007.63
Nature IMMUNOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/natureimmunology)
[26] T cell antigen receptor stimulation induces MALT1 paracaspase-mediated cleavage of the NF-kB inhibitor A20
DOI: 10.1038/ni1561
NATURE CELL BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/naturecellbiology)
[27] Nanog maintains pluripotency of mouse embryonic stem cells by inhibiting NFkB and cooperating with Stat3
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1680
[28] Sterol-dependent endocytosis mediates post-cytokinetic acquisition of PIN2 auxin efflux carrier polarity
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1686
Nature STRUCTURAL & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/natstructmolbiol)
[29] A protein-based EM label for RNA identifies the location of exons in spliceosomes
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1378
[30] Engineered disulfide bonds support the functional rotation mechanism of multidrug efflux pump AcrB
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1379
[31] Protein unfolding by an AAA+ protease is dependent on ATP-hydrolysis rates and substrate energy landscapes
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1380
[32] Single-molecule studies of fork dynamics in Escherichia coli DNA replication
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1381
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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
Canberra: 32
Melbourne: 25
Townsville: 32
Wollongong: 8, 32
AUSTRIA
Innsbruck: 20
BELGIUM
Ghent: 26
Leuven: 26
CHINA
Nanjing: 11
COSTA RICA
Heredia: 2
FRANCE
Lille: 10
Orleans: 4
Paris: 3
Saint-Maur: 4
Strasbourg: 28
Valbonne: 10
GERMANY
Berlin: 23
Bonn: 23
Bremen:
Freiburg: 28
Jena: 23
Konstanz: 30
Tubingen: 28
NETHERLANDS
Noordwijk: 4
Utrecht: 20
NICARAGUA
Managua: 2
SPAIN
Barcelona: 24
SWEDEN
Umea: 28
SWITZERLAND
Lausanne: 17
Zurich: 5, 30
UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge: 24, 25, 27, 30
Cardiff: 14
Newcastle: 25
Nottingham: 9
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Duarte: 25
La Jolla: 16
Los Angeles: 8
Menlo Park: 3
Pasadena: 17
San Diego: 1
San Francisco: 6
Santa Cruz: 29
Stanford: 3
Connecticut
New Haven: 11
Georgia
Athens: 1
Illinois
Argonne: 18
Chicago: 19
Maryland
Gaithersburg: 20
Greenbelt: 4
Massachusetts
Bedford: 4
Boston: 2, 11, 13, 14, 22, 32
Cambridge: 17, 19, 31
Waltham: 13
Woburn: 13
Michigan
Van Buren Township: 18
Minnesota
Rochester: 18
New York
Ithaca: 21
New York: 11
Palisades: 2
North Carolina
Chapel Hill: 7
Triangle Research Park: 7
Ohio
Cleveland: 12
Rhode Island
Providence: 2
Texas
Austin: 24
Dallas: 26
Virginia
Blacksburg: 25
Washington
Seattle: 15
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 Biotechnology (New York)
Peter Hare
Tel: +1 212 726 9284; E-mail: [email protected]
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 Geoscience (London)
Heike Langenberg
Tel: +44 20 7843 4042; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Immunology (New York)
Laurie Dempsey
Tel: +1 212 726 9372; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Materials (London)
Alison Stoddart
Tel: +44 20 7843 4593; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Medicine (New York)
Juan Carlos Lopez
Tel: +1 212 726 9325; E-mail: [email protected]
Nature Methods (New York)
Alison 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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