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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.455 NO.7216 DATED 23 OCTOBER 2008
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Stem cells: Grow your own prostate
Genomics: Profiling lung cancer
Relics: A feathered but flightless dinosaur
Galaxies: Pure and simple
Essays: Being Human
Fossils: Reassessing early photosynthesis
Quantum physics: Moving memories
Cancer: Mouse brain tumour model highlights causative role for gene duo
And finally… Sticky-tape X-rays
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Stem cells: Grow your own prostate (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature07427
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 22 October 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 23 October, but at a later date. ***
Scientists have isolated single stem cells from the prostate and used them to generate new prostates in mice. In a paper published online in Nature this week, Wei-Qiang Gao and colleagues describe the factors that make these cells identifiable, and show that they have long-term self-renewal.
The prostate shrinks and regenerates repeatedly in response to repeated cycles of androgen deprivation and production. A number of cell-surface markers have been reported to identify candidate prostate stem cells, but they are also markers for other stem cell types. The researchers identify CD117 as a marker of a rare adult mouse prostate stem-cell population, and use this marker in combination with others to isolate single cells that can generate a prostate on transplantation in vivo.
CONTACT
Wei-Qiang Gao (Genentech Inc, San Francisco, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 650 225 8101; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Genomics: Profiling lung cancer (pp 1069-1075)
A comprehensive analysis of the lung cancer genome is reported this week in Nature. By finding genes that are mutated in cancer cells compared with healthy cells, scientists are beginning to build a picture of what goes wrong to cause disease.
In a large multicentre study, Richard Wilson and colleagues examined genetic mutations associated with lung adenocarcinoma in 188 patient samples. Over 600 genes with known or potential links to the disease were sequenced, of which 26 were mutated at high frequencies.
The research identifies several genes that were not previously thought to be involved in lung cancer, roughly tripling the number of genes associated with this disease. These include genes that regulate the cell cycle and cell proliferation — ATM, APC, ERBB4 and FGFR4.
Overall the findings provide a road map of the signalling pathways gone awry in lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer death, and expand the range of potential therapeutic options.
CONTACT
Richard Wilson (Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO, USA)
Tel: +1 314 286 1807; E-mail: [email protected]
Matthew Meyerson (Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA) Co-author paper [2]
Tel: +1 617 632 4768; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Relics: A feathered but flightless dinosaur (pp 1105-1108)
A new chapter in the early history of birds is published in Nature this week. The discovery of a bizarre feathered dinosaur from the Middle to Late Jurassic of China that is probably flightless adds complexity to our understanding so far.
The pigeon-sized creature lived a little before Archaeopteryx and is bird-like in many ways, including the presence of four very long ribbon-like tail feathers and a short tail. Fucheng Zhang and colleagues describe how it shows no sign of flight feathers as seen in other bird-like dinosaurs such as Microraptor. This new fossil adds yet more complexity to the early history of evolution from dinosaurs to birds.
CONTACT
Fucheng Zhang (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China)
Tel: +86 10 883 69220; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Galaxies: Pure and simple (pp 1082-1084; N&V)
Galaxies are much less complicated than previously thought, reports a paper in this week’s Nature. This unexpected simplicity and regularity indicates that a single, presently unknown phenomenon controls all galaxy characteristics.
Galaxies come in a huge variety of shapes and sizes. The ‘hierarchical’ theory of galaxy formation suggests that they are assembled from smaller bodies coalescing after numerous mergers driven by cold dark matter.
Michael Disney and colleagues surveyed a sample of two hundred individual galaxies that contain lots of atomic gas, from giant spirals to extreme dwarfs. They measured a series of variables and found that six of them correlated with one another and with a single principle component. The authors conclude that this level of organization is not consistent with the process of hierarchical merging, instead indicating a simple model of formation, with perturbations in the optical colours possibly arising from minor merger events.
CONTACT
Michael Disney (Cardiff University, UK)
Tel: +44 29 2087 4289; Mobile: +44 7852 268 211 E-mail: [email protected]
Sidney van den Bergh (Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, Victoria, Canada) N&V author
Tel: +1 250 363 0006; E-mail: [email protected]
Essays: Being Human (pp 1038-1039)
This week Nature begins a series of Essays that reveals how the latest research is altering our understanding of what it is to be human. Whether in relation to religion or to our collective behaviour in cities, experts explore the potential impact on society, now and in the future, of discoveries in psychology, anthropology, genetics, neuroscience, game theory and network engineering.
Appearing every two weeks for the next five months, each Essay will focus on a particular human characteristic or issue that's central to human life. In the first piece, Pascal Boyer asks whether religion is a product of our evolution. Boyer argues that religious thoughts are an emergent property of our standard cognitive capacities whereas disbelief requires deliberate, effortful work.
CONTACT
Pascal Boyer (Washington University, St Louis, MO, USA)
Tel: +1 314 935 4739; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Fossils: Reassessing early photosynthesis (pp 1101-1104; N&V)
Photosynthesis may not have been around for as long as previously believed. In Nature this week researchers present the earliest unambiguous fossil evidence for eukaryotes and photosynthetic cyanobacteria, bringing forward the date from 2.7 billion years (Gyr) ago to around 1.7 and 2.15 Gyr ago, respectively.
Until now the oldest widely accepted evidence for oxygenic photosynthesis has come from hydrocarbon biomarkers extracted from 2.7-Gyr-old shales in the Pilbara Craton of Australia, thought to be evidence of eukaryotes and photosynthetic cyanobacteria. This early date has caused controversy because of the long delay between this earliest appearance of oxygen-producing cyanobacteria and the rise of atmospheric oxygen some 300 million years later.
Birger Rasmussen and colleagues show that the organic biomarkers were not indigenous to the rocks containing them and must have entered the rocks after 2.2 Gyr ago. Their results eliminate the evidence for oxygenic photosynthesis around 2.7 Gyr ago and previous evidence for the delay between the appearance of these cyanobacteria and the rise in atmospheric oxygen.
CONTACT
Birger Rasmussen (Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia)
Tel: +61 8 9266 9254; E-mail: [email protected]
Woodward Fischer (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 626 395 6145; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Quantum physics: Moving memories (pp 1085-1088)
Researchers have stored a quantum state within a solid-state system and retrieved it again, demonstrating a technology key to enabling quantum computation. In this week’s Nature, John Morton and colleagues show that a single nuclear spin can act as a memory element and store a quantum state for longer than a second.
The transfer of information between processing entities and memory is crucial, but problematic, for quantum computation. In classical systems the information transfer can include a copying step where errors can be spotted and corrected, but in quantum systems this is fundamentally precluded. The team have developed a technology that can get around the problem: the coherent storage and readout of information between electron-spin processing elements and memory elements based on a nuclear spin. The system utilizes phosphorus-31 spin donors in a silicon-28 crystal. The nuclear spin acts as a memory element that can faithfully store the full state of the electron spin for longer than its decoherence time; the state can then be transferred back to the electron spin with about 90% efficiency.
CONTACT
John Morton (Oxford University, UK)
Tel: +44 1865 273790; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] Cancer: Mouse brain tumour model highlights causative role for gene duo (pp 1129-1133)
Two genes have been implicated in the development of a lethal brain tumour, highlighting potential targets for therapeutic development.
Glioblastomas are the most common and aggressive type of primary brain tumour. In this week's Nature, Ronald DePinho and colleagues report that deleting two genes, p53 and Pten, from mouse brains causes the animals to develop glioblastoma-like tumours. Furthermore, they show that both genes are frequently inactivated in human glioblastomas.
It’s thought that these tumours develop from rogue neural stem cells, so the team also looked at cultured mouse brain stem cells. Inactivating p53 and Pten kept the cells in an undifferentiated, stem-cell-like state, and they expressed high levels of the cancer-associated protein Myc. Together the studies implicate the combined actions of p53 and Pten in glioblastoma and highlight Myc as a possible target for future therapies.
CONTACT
Ronald DePinho (Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 632 6085; E-mail: [email protected]
[8] And finally… Sticky-tape X-rays (pp 1089-1092)
Peeling sticky tape emits energy that extends into the X-ray regime, reports a study published this week in Nature. The research provides evidence for a phenomenon that was first observed more than 50 years ago.
It is well known that unwinding sticky tape produces sparks of light that can easily be seen by the naked eye in a dark room. This phenomenon, known as ‘triboluminescence’, is produced by the friction generated when two contacting surfaces move relative to each other. Carlos Camara and colleagues used a motorized peeling machine to unwind an entire roll of Scotch tape at a rate of 3 centimetres per second. By placing their apparatus in a vacuum, they were able to measure the emission of X-rays strong enough to X-ray a human finger.
CONTACT
Carlos Camara (University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 310 592 4861; E-mail: [email protected]
Juan Escobar (University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA) Co-author paper [8]
Tel: +1 310 592 9434; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[9] BAX activation is initiated at a novel interaction site (pp 1076-1081; N&V)
[10] Evidence for a terminal Pt(IV)-oxo complex exhibiting diverse reactivity (pp 1093-1096; N&V)
[11] Fault-induced seismic anisotropy by hydration in subducting oceanic plates (pp 1097-1100)
[12] Control of plant germline proliferation by SCFFBL17 degradation of cell cycle inhibitors (pp 1134-1137)
[13] Protein-folding location can regulate manganesebinding versus copper- or zinc-binding (pp 1138-1142; N&V)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 22 October 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 23 October, but at a later date. ***
[14] Experience with moving visual stimuli drives the early development of cortical direction selectivity
DOI: 10.1038/nature07417
[15] Transcription inactivation through local refolding of the RNA polymerase structure
DOI: 10.1038/nature07510
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: 5
Perth: 5
CHINA
Beijing: 3
CHILE
Santiago: 4
FRANCE
Montpellier: 11
ISRAEL
Rehovot: 10
SOUTH KOREA
Daegu: 12
Pohang: 12
SWITZERLAND
Zurich: 11
UNITED KINGDOM
Cardiff: 4
Cranfield: 13
Leicester: 12
Newcastle: 13
Oxford: 6
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Alabama
Birmingham: 15
California
Berkeley: 4, 6
Los Angeles: 8
San Diego: 15
San Francisco: 1
Stanford: 7
Maryland
Bethesda: 2, 9
Massachusetts
Boston: 2, 7, 9
Cambridge: 2
Michigan
Ann Arbor: 2
Missouri
St Louis: 2, 9
New Jersey
Princeton: 6
New York
New York: 2, 7, 10, 15
North Carolina
Durham: 14
Ohio
Columbus: 15
Texas
Brownsville: 4
Houston: 2
Washington
Seattle: 4
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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