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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.456 NO.7220 DATED 20 NOVEMBER 2008
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Invertebrate neurobiology: The eyes have it
Ocean science: Mixed-up waters influence greenhouse gases
Astrophysics: Possible signature of dark matter annihilation?
Genetics: A role for Rhesus factors
Materials: Stripy nanowires fine-tuned
Cancer: Inflammatory mutation found in liver cancer
And finally... Lava dome soufflé
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Invertebrate neurobiology: The eyes have it (pp 395-399)
It may represent the biggest biomass transport on Earth, but scientists have struggled to explain how marine plankton migrate towards light. In this week’s Nature, Detlev Arendt and colleagues show how simple eyespots in marine zooplankton mediate this light-directed swimming.
The tiny invertebrate larvae that enable marine plankton communities to travel between surface and deeper water layers, depending on light conditions, can sense light intensity via two-celled eyespots resembling the ‘proto-eyes’. These proto-eyes were hypothesized by Darwin as the beginnings of the evolution of the mammalian eye. The team show that eyespot illumination leads to a change in the beating of adjacent cilia through cholinergic signalling. They use computer models to confirm the significance of these local effects on light-directed swimming, and demonstrate increased navigational precision if the organism adopts a helical swimming pattern.
Arendt and colleagues propose that this direct sensory-motor coupling between a light sensor cell and the cilia mediating this ‘phototactic’ swimming represents an ancestral condition in the evolution of animal eyes.
CONTACT
Detlev Arendt (European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg, Germany)
Tel: +49 6221 387624; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Ocean science: Mixed-up waters influence greenhouse gases (pp 373-376; N&V)
Changes in ocean circulation drove glacial carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide fluctuations that accompanied abrupt climate changes during the last ice age, a Nature paper suggests. Understanding the natural causes behind changes in atmospheric greenhouse-gas concentrations is an important part of understanding climate change.
Researchers have struggled to explain how greenhouse-gas fluctuations recorded in ice cores relate to global oceanic circulation. The new modelling study sheds light on this, suggesting that physically forced changes in the distribution of nutrients and dissolved oxygen in our oceans influence greenhouse-gas variability over millennial timescales.
Fluctuations in carbon dioxide levels are mainly controlled by slow changes in the surface-to-deep-water carbon transport in the Southern Ocean, Andreas Schmittner and Eric Galbraith report. These changes correlate with Antarctic temperature. But nitrous oxide levels change more rapidly and are correlated with Greenland temperatures.
CONTACT
Andreas Schmittner (Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA)
Tel: +1 541 737 5194; E-mail: [email protected]
Please note this author is currently travelling with limited access to email.
Eric Galbraith (Princeton University, NJ, USA)
Tel: +1 609 258 2906; E-mail: [email protected]
Thomas Stocker (University of Bern, Switzerland) N&V author
Tel: +41 31 631 44 64; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Astrophysics: Possible signature of dark matter annihilation? (pp 362-365; N&V)
A tantalizing, telltale sign of dark matter annihilation may have been detected high above the skies of Antarctica. The find is reported in this week’s Nature.
John Wefel and colleagues recorded an excess of Galactic cosmic ray electrons at energies of ~300–800 gigaelectronvolts, indicating a nearby source of energetic electrons. It is thought the electrons may have been accelerated by some unseen astrophysical object, such as a pulsar or micro-quasar, or could have arisen from the annihilation of dark matter.
Dark matter, which is thought to make up around 20 per cent of the Universe’s energy density, is inferred from its gravitational effects on visible matter. It is currently impossible to determine whether the excess electrons come from annihilation or an unseen source.
CONTACT
John Wefel (Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA)
Tel: +1 225 578 8696; E-mail: [email protected]
Yousaf Butt (National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 617 953 5108; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Genetics: A role for Rhesus factors (pp 339-343; N&V)
Blood constituents called Rhesus factors help the kidney to process ammonia and may influence male fertility, a mouse study in this week's Nature suggests.
Although the Rhesus blood group system is well known, the physiological role of Rhesus-type proteins is unclear. Anna Maria Marini and colleagues show that mice lacking the renal Rhesus factor Rhcg have impaired ammonium excretion and more alkaline urine than wild-type animals. Male mice lacking Rhcg are also less fertile, producing significantly smaller litters than wild-type controls.
The findings suggest that Rhcg is involved in ammonium processing and pH regulation in both the kidney and the male reproductive tract. The data challenge the long-held notion that ammonia simply diffuses across the kidney epithelium into the urine, implicating a new protein-mediated pathway in the process.
CONTACT
Anna Maria Marini (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium)
Tel: +32 2 650 9957; E-mail : [email protected]
Mark Knepper (National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 301 496 3064; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Materials: Stripy nanowires fine-tuned (pp 369-372)
A new method for building 'stripy' nanowires should help researchers control the optical and electrical properties of these tiny semiconductors.
In this week's Nature, Erik Bakkers and colleagues show high magnification images of 'stripy' indium phosphide nanowires, also known as nanowire superlattices. The stripes represent different crystal structures controlled by doping with tiny amounts of zinc, and the researchers find that they can alter the spacing of the superlattices by changing the wire diameter and zinc concentration. Gallium phosphide nanowire superlattices were also obtained by doping with zinc.
Nanotechnology relies on the premise that nano-sized particles behave very differently to larger particles of the same material, giving the nanomaterial novel properties. The new method represents a significant step in nanowire development, allowing both structure and fundamental properties to be fine-tuned.
CONTACT
Erik Bakkers (Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven, Netherlands)
Tel: +31 40 2742105; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Cancer: Inflammatory mutation found in liver cancer (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature07475
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 19 November 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 20 November, but at a later date. ***
A type of mutation that ‘switches on’ inflammatory signalling pathways in human liver tumours is described in a paper in this week’s Nature. Similar mutations may occur in other inflammatory epithelial cancers.
Jessica Zucman-Rossi and colleagues studied human inflammatory hepatocellular adenomas (IHCAs), benign liver tumours with a strong inflammatory signature. ‘Gain-of-function’ mutations in the gp130 signalling component of the interleukin-6 receptor — a pro-inflammatory signalling pathway — were found in around 60% of IHCAs.
The gp130 alterations were accompanied by mutations that activate beta-catenin, a molecule already implicated in the development of liver cancer. So it’s thought that the two mutations cooperate to promote tumour formation.
CONTACT
Jessica Zucman-Rossi (Institut National de la Sante et la Recherce Medicale, Paris, France)
Tel: +33 1 53 72 51 66; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] And finally… Lava dome soufflé (pp 377-381)
Scientists have found a new way of constraining the mechanisms responsible for generating long-period earthquakes at explosive volcanic systems, reports a paper in this week’s Nature. Using high-resolution image processing and a network of seismometers, Jeffrey Johnson and colleagues were able to effectively ‘see’ the surface manifestations of deformations producing earthquakes within a volcanic dome.
Volcanoes such as Mount St Helens, USA, and Soufrière Hills, Montserrat, extrude lava gradually over many years, but also go through short-term explosive periods of self-destruction and degassing. Scientists can quantify long-term changes in lava effusion by using remote sensing and field mapping techniques, but field data documenting short-term eruptive phenomena are scarce.
Johnson and colleagues studied Santiaguito, a volcano in the western highlands of Guatemala that has been erupting regularly since 1922, when it formed in the crater of a larger volcano, Santa Maria. The team used high-resolution video, a thermal imager and Doppler radar during a week of observations looking down at Santiaguito from the summit of Santa Maria. They monitored about 40 eruptions a day, in tandem with a six-station seismometer and infrasound network.
The resulting videos reveal that explosive pyroclastic emissions of rocks and ash coincide with a systematic uplift of the lava dome itself. The authors could then link these dome surges to the generation of long-period earthquakes — an enigmatic and poorly understood type of seismicity occurring at volcanoes worldwide.
CONTACT
Jeffrey Johnson (New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro, NM, USA)
Tel: +1 575 835 6398; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[8] Identification of Holliday junction resolvases from humans and yeast (pp 357-361)
[9] Isotropic quantum scattering and unconventional superconductivity (pp 366-368)
[10] Concerted multi-pronged attack by calpastatin to occlude the catalytic cleft of heterodimeric calpains (pp 404-408; N&V)
[11] Calcium-bound structure of calpain and its mechanism of inhibition by calpastatin (pp 409-412; N&V)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 19 November 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 20 November, but at a later date. ***
[12] The replisome uses mRNA as a primer after colliding with RNA polymerase
DOI: 10.1038/nature07527
[13] Successful range-expanding plants experience less above-ground and below-ground enemy impact
DOI: 10.1038/nature07474
[14] Emergence of complex cell properties by learning to generalize in natural scenes
DOI: 10.1038/nature07481
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
Brussels: 4
CANADA:
Kingston: 11
Montreal: 10
CHINA
Nanjing: 3
FRANCE
Bordeaux: 6
Gif-sur-Yvette: 6
Paris: 4, 6
GERMANY
Berlin: 1, 14
Hamburg: 7
Heidelberg: 1
Katlenburg-Lindau: 3
Tubingen: 1
MEXICO
Colima: 7
NETHERLANDS
Delft: 5
Eindhoven: 5
Heteren: 13
Leiden: 13
Nijmegen: 5
Wageningen: 13
RUSSIA
Moscow: 3
Troitsk: 9
SOUTH KOREA
Suwon: 9
SWEDEN
Lund: 5
SWITZERLAND
Zurich: 4
UNITED KINGDOM
South Mimms: 8
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Alabama
Huntsville: 3
Florida
Gainesville: 12
Jupiter: 6
Louisiana
Baton Rouge: 3
Maryland
College Park: 3
New Jersey
Princeton: 2
New Mexico
Los Alamos: 9
Socorro: 7
New York
New York: 12
North Carolina
Chapel Hill: 7
Ohio
Cleveland: 14
Oregon
Corvallis: 2
Pennsylvania
Bethlehem: 7
Pittsburgh: 14
Tennessee
Memphis: 10
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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