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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.454 NO.7205 DATED 07 August 2008
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Electronics: I spy with my electronic eye
Commentary: Where is the science in drug doping?
Virology: Blueprint for infection
Microbiology: Virus to virus
Tuberculosis: A secreted factor controls the bacteria’s virulence
Earth sciences: Asymmetric inner workings revealed
And finally… A potted history of milk
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Electronics: I spy with my electronic eye (pp 748-753; N&V)
An electronic eye camera that uses a curved detection surface like a human eye to achieve exceptional imaging is described in this week’s Nature. This new imaging device could simplify the optics in miniature cameras, and the underlying approach to producing curved electronic surfaces could find use in biological monitoring devices and ‘smart’ prosthetics.
Imaging technologies have been developed for use in rigid semiconductor materials, glass plates and plastic sheets, all of which are flat in nature. Previous attempts to create hemispherical shapes in imaging materials have focused on the deformation of plastic sheets and the folding of elastic membranes. However, processing steps for all of these needed to be performed on curved surfaces, and it has proved difficult to achieve this kind of manipulation of established optoelectronic materials.
John Rogers and colleagues use well established electrical materials and processing—which are employed to create optoelectrical systems on flat two-dimensional surfaces—and implement unusual designs that allow large amounts of compressibility and stretchability. This means that flat layouts can be transformed into curved shapes, which—in the case of imaging systems—allows for wide-angle fields of view, compact sizes, and low image distortions. This development could prove useful in the production of many different imaging devices.
CONTACT
John Rogers (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA)
Tel: +1 217 244 4797; Mobile: +1 217 369 7398; E-mail: [email protected]
Takao Someya (University of Tokyo, Japan) N&V author
Tel: +81 3 5841 6820; E-mail: [email protected]
Commentary: Where is the science in drug doping?
The Olympic Games are approaching, but can the anti-doping agencies ensure, through testing, that sporting events will be drug-free? Detecting a banned foreign substance in a blood or urine sample should be clear evidence of guilt. But even when athletes test positive, what are the chances that they are actually guilty of doping?
In a Commentary in Nature this week, statistician Donald Berry reviews evidence released from the case of deposed Tour de France champion Floyd Landis and says that flaws both in the practice of drug testing and the logic under which it is applied make it impossible to conclude one way or the other. As careers might well depend not just on performances, but also on the results of drug tests, it is crucial that testing improves.
Berry argues that procedures need to become more scientific. Sports-doping laboratories must “define and publicize a standard testing procedure, including unambiguous criteria”, says Berry. Among other things, the substance used, the dose, the method of delivery and individual metabolisms all need to be taken into account if rigorous and reliable testing is to be achieved.
CONTACTS
Donald Berry (MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas, Houston, TX, USA)
E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Virology: Blueprint for infection (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature07027
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 06 August 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 07 August, but at a later date. ***
The host proteins and enzymes hijacked by West Nile Virus to pursue its life cycle are identified online this week in Nature. The findings reveal potential antiviral targets for this and other viruses from the same family.
Erol Fikrig and colleagues performed a human-genome-wide RNA interference screen in infected cells, knocking out individual host proteins and enzymes to see what effect this had on the virus. The result is a molecular blueprint of virus attack, highlighting factors that help and those that hinder infection.
The team extended their findings to dengue virus and discovered that the two viruses have shared and unique interactions with the host cell. Understanding these differences will help to explain the variations in the diseases caused by viruses of the same family, say the authors.
CONTACT
Erol Fikrig (Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA)
Tel: +1 203 785 4140; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Microbiology: Virus to virus (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature07218
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 06 August 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 07 August, but at a later date. ***
Even viruses get viruses, according to research published online this week in Nature. The finding could explain how they can swap genes to shape virus evolution.
Didier Raoult and colleagues looked at cells infected with a new strain of mimivirus, the largest known virus, using electron microscopy. Surprisingly they noticed a smaller type of virus attached to the virus-making factory inside infected cells. The new virus — Sputnik — was unable to infect cells by itself but seemed to hijack the larger to achieve its infectious aims.
Sputnik is the first example of a virus infecting another virus to make it ‘sick’, establishing a previously unknown family of viruses that the authors term ‘virophages’. Observation of its genome showed that Sputnik had looted genes from its host virus as well as from other organisms, representing one of the most striking examples of gene mixing and matching within the virus world. A related news story will appear be available on the press site from Monday.
CONTACT
Didier Raoult (Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France)
Tel: +33 4 91 32 43 75; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Tuberculosis: A secreted factor controls the bacteria’s virulence (pp 717-721; N&V)
Like other nasty microbes, the tuberculosis-causing pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis can tailor its physiology to maximize havoc in its human host — for example, it uses a secretion system known as ESX-1 to export virulence factors that target the host’s defences. A paper in this week’s Nature provides a glimpse into how this cunning system regulates itself.
Jeffery Cox and colleagues show that a factor termed EspR is required for ESX-1 function and for M. tuberculosis virulence. EspR binds to DNA to assist in its transcription into RNA and is secreted from the bacterial cell by the very system it regulates — namely, ESX-1. Efflux of the EspR regulator therefore puts the brakes on transcription of important ESX-1 components and so cuts back the secretion of ESX-1, which in turn can be boosted by hanging on to its EspR rather than exporting it.
This neat ‘feedback’ regulation mechanism may have implications for developing a vaccine against tuberculosis, suggest the authors, given that some of the proteins secreted by ESX-1 are important antigens. Fine control of their secretion may also be critical for successful infection.
CONTACT
Jeffery Cox (University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 415 502 4240; E-mail: [email protected]
Steven Porcelli (Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, NY, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 718 430 3228; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Earth sciences: Asymmetric inner workings revealed (pp 758-761; N&V)
The uppermost 100 kilometres of the Earth’s solid inner core is subject to an east–west divide. Seismic waves travel more rapidly and are attenuated more severely in the eastern than in the western hemisphere, and in the latter hemisphere seismic waves travel faster in one direction than others. The origin of this hemispherical dichotomy has remained enigmatic, but a paper in this week's Nature ventures an explanation—it could be the result of thermochemical variations in the mantle being conveyed across the liquid outer core.
Julien Aubert and colleagues use numerical simulations to show that large-scale fluid flow in the outer core could act as a go-between from the lower mantle to the inner core.
This might explain how the heterogeneous structure of the lower mantle has influenced the inner core's growth and seismic properties over the past 100–300 million years of the Earth's history, say the authors.
CONTACT
Julien Aubert (Université Paris-Diderot, France)
Tel: +33 1 44 27 47 96; E-mail: [email protected]
John Lister (University of Cambridge, UK) N&V author
Tel: +44 1223 330 888; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] And finally… A potted history of milk (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature07180
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 06 August 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 07 August, but at a later date. ***
The early history of milk is extended by two millennia to the seventh millennium bc thanks to the analysis of over 2,200 pottery vessels from the Near East and the Balkans. Online in Nature this week, Richard Evershed and colleagues suggest that even before 6,500 bc milk was processed and stored, although this varied regionally depending on the farming techniques used.
Cattle, sheep and goats were familiar farmyard animals by the eighth millennium bc, but until now, the first clear evidence for milk use was the late fifth millennium. Organic residues preserved in archaeological pottery not only extend the history, but show that milking was particularly important in areas that were more favourable to cattle compared to other regions where sheep and goats were more common.
CONTACT
Richard Evershed (University of Bristol, UK)
Tel: +44 117 9287671; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[7] Clumps and streams in the local dark matter distribution (pp 735-738)
[8] Determination of the fermion pair size in a resonantly interacting superfluid (pp 739-743)
[9] Using photoemission spectroscopy to probe a strongly interacting Fermi gas (pp 744-747)
[10] Rapid change in drift of the Australian plate records collision with Ontong Java plateau (pp 754-757)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 06 August 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 them on this release to avoid multiple mailings they will not appear in print on 07 August, but at a later date. ***
[11] Prolyl 4-hydroxylation regulates Argonaute 2 stability
DOI: 10.1038/nature07186
[12] Neurogenin 2 controls cortical neuron migration through regulation of Rnd2
DOI: 10.1038/nature07198
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
Brisbane : 10
FINLAND
Oulu: 11
FRANCE
Marseille: 3
Paris: 3, 5
GREECE
Thessaloniki: 6
ISRAEL
Jerusalem: 6
Rehovot: 2
NETHERLANDS
Leiden: 6
ROMANIA
Bucharest: 6
SWITZERLAND
Geneva: 12
Zurich: 7
TURKEY
Canakkale: 6
Istanbul: 6
UNITED KINGDOM
Bristol: 6
Cardiff: 6
London: 6, 12
Manchester: 6
Oxford: 6
Sheffield: 6
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
La Jolla: 6
San Francisco: 4
Stanford: 6
Colorado
Boulder: 9
Connecticut
New Haven: 2
Georgia
Atlanta: 11
Illinois
Evanston: 1
Urbana: 1
Maryland
Baltimore: 5
Bethesda: 3
Chevy Chase: 2
Massachusetts
Boston: 2, 11
Cambridge: 8
Charlestown: 11
New Jersey
Princeton: 7
Texas
Galveston: 2
Washington
Seattle: 12
PRESS CONTACTS…
From North America and Canada
Katherine Anderson, Nature New York
Tel: +1 212 726 9231; E-mail: [email protected]
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]
From the UK/Europe/other countries not listed above
Jen Middleton, Nature London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4502; E-mail [email protected]
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