NATURE AND THE NATURE RESEARCH JOURNALS PRESS RELEASE
For papers that will be published online on 18 May 2008
This press release is copyrighted to the Nature journals mentioned below.
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Nature Geoscience: Fewer Atlantic hurricanes under global warming
Nature Genetics: Genetic links between pigmentation and skin cancer
Nature: Towards a model for Huntingdon’s disease
Nature Genetics: Genetic susceptibility to gastric cancer
Nature Methods: Three-dimensional microscopy at nanoscale resolution
· 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.
Warning: This document, and the Nature journal papers to which it refers, may contain information that is price sensitive (as legally defined, for example, in the UK Criminal Justice Act 1993 Part V) with respect to publicly quoted companies. Anyone dealing in securities using information contained in this document, or in advance copies of a Nature journal’s content, may be guilty of insider trading under the US Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
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.
[1] Nature Geoscience: Fewer Atlantic hurricanes under global warming
DOI: 10.1038/ngeo202
Hurricanes and tropical storms will become rarer under the pronounced global warming expected by the end of the twenty-first century, suggests a regional climate model study of the Atlantic basin published online this week in Nature Geoscience. These findings are at odds with the notion that climate change will drive an increase in tropical storm and hurricane frequency.
Tom Knutson and co-workers use a regional model of the Atlantic Ocean basin that was designed for the simulation of hurricanes and that reproduces the observed increase in hurricane frequency between 1980 and 2006. Using an ensemble of climate model projections for the end of the twenty-first century to drive their model, they simulate a decrease in hurricane frequency but a substantial increase in rainfall associated with hurricanes and tropical storms.
The model supports the hypothesis that the main cause of the recent increase in Atlantic hurricane numbers was the warming of the tropical Atlantic Ocean relative to the other tropical ocean basins, whereas a uniform warming of all tropical ocean basins, as expected from global warming, would not lead to increases in Atlantic hurricane frequency.
Author contact:
Tom Knutson (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, Princeton, NJ, USA)
Tel: +1 609 452 6509; E-mail: [email protected]
****Please note a press briefing will take place UNDER STRICT EMBARGO on Friday 16 May at 10:00 US Eastern time / 15:00 London time (BST). For full details or further information please contact:
Jana Goldman, Public Affairs Officer, NOAA on [email protected]****
[2], [3] & [4] Nature Genetics: Genetic links between pigmentation and skin cancer
DOI: 10.1038/ng.160
DOI: 10.1038/ng.161
DOI: 10.1038/ng.163
Scientists have identified genetic variants that increase the risk of getting skin cancer, and provide new insight into the relationship between skin cancer and pigmentation, according to three studies published online this week in Nature Genetics.
Daniel Gudbjartsson and colleagues followed up on their recent identification of sequence variants associated with hair, eye, and skin pigmentation, and tested 11 of these for association with susceptibility to skin cancer. They found variants near ASIP, a gene with a well documented role in pigmentation, to confer increased risk of cutaneous melanoma—an aggressive, malignant tumour of the skin’s pigment-producing cells that causes the majority of deaths related to skin cancer. They also report an association of a variant in the gene TYR, which encodes an enzyme required for the production of the skin pigment melanin. Each gene was also associated with the more common but less deadly form of skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma.
In an independent study, Stuart MacGregor and colleagues identified two variants in the region containing ASIP to be associated with risk of cutaneous melanoma as well. Finally, in a third study, Gudbjartsson and colleagues report two variants in the gene TPCN2, encoding a calcium transporter, to be associated with blond versus brown hair. This is the third calcium transporter found to influence pigmentation, suggesting an important role for this family of proteins.
Author contacts:
Daniel Gudbjartsson (deCODE Genetics, Reykjavik, Iceland)
Tel: +354 570 1964; E-mail: [email protected] Author paper [2]
Kari Stefansson (deCODE Genetics, Reykjavik, Iceland)
Tel: +354 570 1900; E-mail: [email protected] Author paper [3]
Stuart MacGregor (Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia)
Tel: +61 7 3845 3563; E-mail: [email protected] Author paper [4]
[5] Nature: Towards a model for Huntingdon’s disease
Progress towards developing a non-human primate model for Huntington’s disease is reported online in Nature this week. The research represents the first transgenic model of human disease in non-human primates, and suggests that it will be feasible generate valuable non-human primate models not only for Huntingdon’s disease but possibly for other human diseases.
Because of the close physiological, neurological and genetic similarities, non-human primate models of human disorders are important in understanding the pathology of disease and in developing therapeutic strategies. Huntington’s disease is a severely disabling and lethal neurodegenerative disorder that usually begins to display symptoms in a patient’s late forties to early fifties. Anthony Chan and colleagues establish expression of the first exon of the human huntingtin gene, which encodes a disease-typical polyglutamine expansion in monkeys, and observe some hallmark features of Huntington’s disease.
The team believes that establishing such models is invaluable for understanding disease pathogenesis and for the development of early diagnostic and treatment strategies.
Author contact:
Anthony Chan (Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Atlanta, GA, USA)
Tel: +1 404 712 8347; E-mail: [email protected]
Media contact:
Lisa Newbern (Chief Public Affairs Officer, Yerkes National Primate Research Center)
Tel: +1 404 727 7709; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Nature Genetics: Genetic susceptibility to gastric cancer
DOI: 10.1038/ng.152
A variant in the gene PSCA is associated with increased risk of diffuse-type gastric cancer – one of the two major categories of gastric cancer. A report online in Nature Genetics this week describes a genome wide association study from Japan and Korea to investigate one of the world’s leading causes of cancer death.
Previous work has suggested that there are ‘intestinal’ and ‘diffuse’ types of gastric cancer. The diffuse type is uniformly distributed geographically, and is unrelated to infection by Helicobacter pylori, which is often correlated with the intestinal type.
Teruhiko Yoshida and colleagues carried out a genome-wide association study for diffuse-type gastric cancer in Japan, and identified a variant in the gene PSCA to be significantly associated with elevated risk. This association was replicated in an additional group of cases and controls from Korea. The function of the PSCA gene product is unknown, although the authors show that it is anchored in the cell membrane and can inhibit the proliferation of cultured cells.
Author contact:
Teruhiko Yoshida (National Cancer Center Research Institute, Tokyo, Japan)
Tel: +81 3 3547 5249; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] Nature Methods: Three-dimensional microscopy at nanoscale resolution
DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.1214
True 3D super-resolution fluorescence imaging is now possible, reports a study online this week in Nature Methods. The technique opens the door to previously unattainable detailed 3D fluorescence images of the inside of single cells.
Laser scanning microscopy is an invaluable tool for peering inside biological specimens. It can scan a focused imaging spot inside the sample to produce an image along a single thin internal plane, whose thickness is determined by the height of the imaging spot. A 3D image is created by assembling multiple image planes; thinner planes yield better vertical resolution. Unfortunately, the physical laws that govern light microscopy limit how small this imaging spot can be made, and this limits the 3D resolving power of the method, particularly in the vertical dimension.
Stefan Hell and colleagues designed a microscope that overcomes this limitation by producing a nearly perfectly spherical 40 nanometre diameter scanning spot. This allowed them to obtain the very first 3D fluorescence images capable of distinguishing the locations of different proteins in organelles as small as mitochondria.
Author contact:
Stefan Hell (Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany)
Tel: +49 551 201 2500; E-Mail: [email protected]
****************************************************************************
Items from other Nature journals to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature)
[8] Dynamic repertoire of a eukaryotic transcriptome surveyed at single-nucleotide resolution
DOI: 10.1038/nature07002
NATURE CELL BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/naturecellbiology)
[9] The HECT-domain ubiquitin ligase Huwe1 controls neural differentiation and proliferation by destabilizing the N-Myc oncoprotein
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1727
[10] STIM1 signalling controls store-operated calcium entry required for development and contractile function in skeletal muscle
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1731
[11] Yeast Ataxin-7 links histone deubiquitination with gene gating and mRNA export
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1733
[12] An agonist-induced conformational change in the growth hormone receptor determines the choice of signalling pathway
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1737
NATURE CHEMICAL BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/nchembio)
[13] Disparate proteome reactivity profiles of carbon electrophiles
DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.91
NATURE GENETICS (http://www.nature.com/naturegenetics)
[14] Gene silencing in cancer by histone H3 lysine 27 trimethylation independent of promoter DNA methylation
DOI: 10.1038/ng.159
NATURE GEOSCIENCE (http://www.nature.com/ngeo)
[15] Rapidly changing flows in the Earth’s core
DOI: 10.1038/ngeo203
[16] Clay minerals in delta deposits and organic preservation potential on Mars
DOI: 10.1038/ngeo207
NATURE IMMUNOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/natureimmunology)
[17] SLP-65 regulates immunoglobulin light chain gene recombination through the PI(3)K-PKB-Foxo pathway
DOI: 10.1038/ni.1616
NATURE MATERIALS (http://www.nature.com/naturematerials)
[18] A complete representation of structure–property relationships in crystals
DOI: 10.1038/nmat2200
[19] Interstitial oxide ion conductivity in the layered tetrahedral networkmelilite structure
DOI: 10.1038/nmat2201
Nature MEDICINE (http://www.nature.com/naturemedicine)
[20] The Ashwell receptor mitigates the lethal coagulopathy of sepsis
DOI: 10.1038/nm1760
[21] Persistent activation of an innate immune response translates respiratory viral infection into chronic lung disease
DOI: 10.1038/nm1770
[22] Matching of oligoclonal immunoglobulin transcriptomes and proteomes of cerebrospinal fluid in multiple sclerosis
DOI: 10.1038/nm1714
NATURE METHODS (http://www.nature.com/nmeth)
[23] Cell surface protein-protein interaction analysis with time-resolved FRET and snap-tag technologies: application to GPCR oligomerization
DOI: 10.1038/ nmeth.1213
NATURE NANOTECHNOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/nnano)
[24] Computer simulation study of fullerene translocation through lipid membranes
DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2008.130
Nature NEUROSCIENCE (http://www.nature.com/natureneuroscience)
[25] Thinning of sensorimotor cortices in children with Tourette syndrome
DOI: 10.1038/nn.2121
[26] Decision-making with multiple alternatives
DOI: 10.1038/nn.2123
[27] T–type Ca2+ channels, SK2 channels, and SERCAs gate sleep–related oscillations in thalamic dendrites
DOI: 10.1038/nn.2124
[28] Sexually dimorphic gastrin releasing peptide system in the spinal cord controls male reproductive functions
DOI: 10.1038/nn.2126
NATURE PHOTONICS (http://www.nature.com/nphoton)
[29] Optical frequency comb with submillihertz linewidth and more than 10W average power
DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2008.79
Nature PHYSICS (http://www.nature.com/naturephysics)
[30] Observation of quantum-measurement backaction with an ultracold atomic gas
DOI: 10.1038/nphys965
[31] Measuring nanomechanical motion using a microwave cavity interferometer
DOI: 10.1038/nphys974
Nature STRUCTURAL & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/natstructmolbiol)
[32] Structural insights into human KAP1 PHD finger–bromodomain and its role in gene silencing
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1416
[33] Telomerase recruitment by the telomere end binding protein-beta facilitates G-quadruplex DNA unfolding in ciliates
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1422
[34] Protein disaggregation by the AAA+ chaperone ClpB involves partial threading of looped polypeptide segments
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1425
[35] Internal dynamics control activation and activity of the autoinhibited Vav DH domain
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1428
[36] A structural link between inactivation and block of a K+ channel
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1430
[37] Structural basis of Nipah and Hendra virus attachment to their cell-surface receptor ephrin-B2
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1435
***************************************************************
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
Brisbane: 4
Carlton: 4
Melbourne: 4, 34
St Lucia: 12
Sydney: 4
Westmead: 4
CANADA:
Calgary: 24
London: 24
Montreal: 8
CHINA
Shanghai: 9
DENMARK
Copenhagen: 15
FINLAND
Espoo: 24
FRANCE
Ceze: 23
Marseille: 36
Montpellier: 23
Paris: 4, 11
GERMANY
Berlin: 34
Freiburg: 17
Goettingen: 7, 36
Hamburg: 36
Heidelberg: 3, 7, 11, 34
Martinsried: 22
Munich: 22
Potsdam: 15
Witten: 33
HONG KONG
Sha tin: 14
HUNGARY
Budapest: 3
ICELAND
Reykjavik: 2, 3
ITALY
Genova: 4
JAPAN
Ehime: 6
Hiroshima: 6
Ibaraki: 6
Kanagawa: 6
Kyoto: 28
Nagoya: 6, 12, 14
Sapporo: 27
Shizuoka: 6
Tokyo: 6, 28
NETHERLANDS
Nijmegen: 2, 3
POLAND
Wolka-Kosowska: 5
PORTUGAL
Coimbra: 35
ROMANIA
Napoca: 3
SLOVAKIA
Banska Bystrica: 3
SOUTH KOREA
Gyeonggi-do: 6
SPAIN
Albacete: 27
Valencia: 3
Zaragoza: 3
SWEDEN
Gothenburg: 33
Huddinge: 3
Lund: 4
Stockholm: 3, 4
SWITZERLAND
Basel: 27
Lausanne: 23, 27
Lausanne-Dorigny: 27
Zurich: 21
THAILAND
Bangkok: 24
Nakhonpathom: 24
UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge: 8
Leeds: 4
Liverpool: 8, 19
London: 8, 9, 19
Oxford: 37
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Arizona
Phoenix: 4
California
Berkeley: 30, 36
La Jolla: 13, 20
Los Angeles: 4, 25
Mountain View: 16
Palo Alto: 21
Pasadena: 18, 31
Colorado
Boulder: 29, 31
District of Columbia
Washington: 16
Georgia
Atlanta: 5
Indiana
Indianapolis: 12
Iowa
Ames: 35
Maryland
Baltimore: 4
Bethesda: 2, 3, 4
College Park: 19
Gaithersburg: 19
Laurel: 16
Massachusetts
Boston: 17
Michigan
Ann Arbor: 29
East Lansing: 28
Missouri
St Louis: 21
New Jersey
Princeton: 1
New York
New York: 9, 25, 32
North Carolina
Chapel Hill: 10
Durham: 10
Ohio
Columbus: 14
Oregon
Portland: 27
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia: 4, 32
Rhode Island
Providence: 16
Texas
Dallas: 35
Houston: 14
Washington
Seattle: 26
West Virginia
Morgantown: 32
PRESS CONTACTS…
For media inquiries relating to embargo policy for all the Nature Research Journals:
Rachel Twinn (Nature London)
Tel: +44 20 7843 4658; E-mail: [email protected]
Katherine Anderson (Nature New York)
Tel: +1 212 726 9231; E-mail: [email protected]
Ruth Francis (Head of Press, 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 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)
Hugh Ash
Tel: +1 212 726 9627; 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 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]
About Nature Publishing Group
Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is a division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd, dedicated to serving the academic, professional scientific and medical communities. NPG's flagship title, Nature, was first published in 1869. Other publications include Nature research journals, Nature Reviews, Nature Clinical Practice and a range of prestigious academic journals including society-owned publications. NPG also provides news content through [email protected]. Scientific career information and free job postings are offered on Naturejobs.
NPG is a global company with headquarters in London and offices in New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Boston, Tokyo, Paris, Munich, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Delhi, Mexico City and Basingstoke. For more information, please go to www.nature.com.
