NATURE AND THE NATURE RESEARCH JOURNALS PRESS RELEASE
For papers that will be published online on 22 March 2009
This press release is copyrighted to the Nature journals mentioned below.
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Immunology: A secret doorway into the brain
Photonics: Heat-assisted magnetic recording
Geoscience: Dangers in the deep
Genetics: Risk factors for cardiovascular health
Medicine: Unexpected tumour growth?
Chemical Biology: Fragment filtering goes virtual
Methods: Finding footprints in the genome
And finally…Nature: Stellar evolution: Is it or isn’t it?
· 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.
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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/.
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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] Immunology: A secret doorway into the brain
DOI: 10.1038/ni.1716
Scientists have identified how immune cells bypass the blood-brain barrier to enter the brain, which in turn allows other immune cells to enter the brain and cause disease. The findings, published in Nature Immunology, have implications for our understanding of the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis (MS).
Controversy surrounded previous work as to which immune cells were responsible for the pathology associated with multiple sclerosis or its mouse model – experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis. Federica Sallusto and colleagues resolve much of the controversy by showing two waves of immune cells enter the brain. First, cells expressing the homing receptor CCR6 enter via the choroid plexus – a blood vessel-rich region that sits above the spinal column – whose cells function to separate the blood supply from cerebral spinal fluids. Once inside, these immune cells can initiate attack on the brain tissues and trigger changes to the blood-brain barrier, causing it to become leaky and allowing other immune cells to enter the brain and contribute to the pathogenic disease process.
Importantly, the authors show similar findings occur in brain tissues of MS patients. Future work is needed to address whether targeting these CCR6-expressing immune cells might provide therapeutic benefit to MS patients.
Author contact:
Federica Sallusto (Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Bellinzona, Switzerland)
Tel: +41 91 820 0315; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Photonics: Heat-assisted magnetic recording
DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2009.26
A next-generation data storage scheme that uses plasmonics to overcome the limitations of current magnetic storage technology is reported online this week in Nature Photonics.
As magnetic grains in a disk get smaller they also become unstable and lose their ability to store information, but raising their temperature can resolve the problem. William Challener and his colleagues built a proof-of-principle heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) system and recorded data at a density of about 48,000 gigabytes per square metre. Although this value is comparable to today’s state-of-the-art hard disk drives, it has the potential to be scaled to values that are out of reach of conventional magnetic recording, which is now close to approaching its theoretical limits.
The key to the HAMR prototype is a plasmonic transducer integrated into a recording head that flies just 15 nanometres above a magnetic disk rotating at 2,700 revolutions per minute. The lollipop-shaped transducer focuses light from a semiconductor laser down to a tiny spot, allowing highly localized heating in the magnetic disk and therefore the creation of small, dense data tracks.
Author contact:
William Challener (Seagate Technology, Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
Tel: +1 412 918 7197; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Geoscience: Dangers in the deep
DOI: 10.1038/ngeo472
A neurotoxin produced by marine algae is escaping from surface waters off California and invading the deep ocean, according to a study online in Nature Geoscience.
Blooms of the algae Pseudo-nitzschia in the upper ocean generate dangerously high levels of the neurotoxin domoic acid that threaten coastal ecosystems worldwide. Claudia Benitez-Nelson and colleagues show that large quantities of this toxin are sinking to depth off the coast of California, where it can invade deep-sea food webs too. In some cases, concentrations of domoic acid exceeded the United States federal limit by over five times.
Domoic acid causes amnesiac shellfish poisoning in humans, and is linked to mass mortality of marine mammals, including the deaths of over 400 California sea lions in 1998. Large Pseudo-nitzschia blooms have also caused beach closures and disruptions to the shell-fish industry in the western United States.
Author contacts:
Claudia Benitez-Nelson (University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA)
Please note the author is currently travelling, but may be reached on the following number:
Tel: +34 93 81 1915; E-mail: [email protected]
Emily Sekula-Wood (University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA) Co-author
Tel: +1 803 777 4514; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] & [5] Genetics: Risk factors for cardiovascular health
DOI: 10.1038/ng.364
DOI: 10.1038/ng.362
Several genetic variants that predispose individuals to sudden cardiac death have been identified in two studies published online this week in Nature Genetics. The discovery may help to explain and possibly treat irregular heart palpitations that often underlie severe cardiac dysfunction.
Sudden cardiac death is associated with the amount of time between heartbeats, where abnormally prolonged or shortened durations increase the risk for irregular heartbeats. This causes a disruption in the electrical and chemical signalling necessary for a healthy heart.
Two large independent association studies carried out by the QTSCD and QTGEN Consortia have identified ten new regions of the genome that contain common variants significantly associated with heartbeat intervals. These associations were found near genes previously known to modulate the electrical activity of the heart, such as sodium and potassium ion channels, or near genes that are plausible but unsuspected candidates involved in heart cell growth and development, blood pressure regulation, and calcium release.
The identification of the precise mechanism underlying the effects of these common variants on abnormal heartbeat intervals will be critical to improving the design of therapeutics used to maintain and enhance cardiovascular function.
Author contacts:
Christopher Newton-Cheh (Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA) Author paper [4]
Tel: +1 617 643 3615; E-mail: [email protected]
Aravinda Chakravarti (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA) Author paper [5]
Tel: +1 410 502 7525; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Medicine: Unexpected tumour growth?
DOI: 10.1038/nm.1941
Blood vessel Inhibitors have been pursued as anticancer agents, but in low doses they may actually promote blood-vessel formation and tumour growth in mice. The results, published online in Nature Medicine this week, call for a reassessment of these inhibitors as anticancer agents, with implications for their potential use in humans.
Certain inhibitors of integrins – cell surface receptors that define cellular shape, mobility, and regulate the cell cycle – have entered clinical trials as agents for cancer treatment, owing to their ability to prevent angiogenesis (blood-vessel growth), but their success has been limited. Andrew Reynolds, Kairbaan Hodivala-Dilke and their colleagues show that low concentrations of integrin inhibitors can paradoxically stimulate tumour growth and tumour angiogenesis by altering the trafficking of one specific integrin and of a well known proangiogenic molecule.
Author contacts:
Andrew Reynolds (Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK)
Tel: +44 207 153 5538; E-mail: [email protected]
Kairbaan Hodivala-Dilke (Cancer Research UK, London, UK)
Tel: +44 207 014 0410; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] Chemical Biology: Fragment filtering goes virtual
DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.155
Scientists have discovered a powerful approach to fragment-based drug discovery, a technique that could provide new drug leads.
Fragment-based drug discovery-identifying small chemical pieces that can then be developed into drug leads-has been very successful. However, the current approaches used to screen fragments are not 'high throughput', so only a small number of fragments can be tested for each drug target.
Online in Nature Chemical Biology this week, Yu Chen and Brian Shoichet wanted to know if computational docking - a method to predict how a chemical will interact with a protein - could be used to screen a large collection of chemical fragments at once. First they used computational docking to search for fragments that might bind to beta-lactamase, a challenging drug target. They then separately determined the enzyme’s structure with the computationally identified fragments bound, which revealed that the computer predictions had been accurate. After chemical optimization, the fragments were converted into good beta-lactamase inhibitors.
Author contact:
Brian Shoichet (University of California San Francisco, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 415 514 4126; E-mail: [email protected]
[8] Methods: Finding footprints in the genome
DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.1313
A method for measuring in vivo protein occupancy in the entire yeast genome is presented in a study published online in Nature Methods this week. The technique will provide new details about how genes are regulated.
The idea behind this method is simple: genomic DNA that is bound by proteins is shielded from DNase I, an enzyme that digests the DNA, leaving an intact DNA fragment. This DNA fragment is a footprint of the protein, corresponding in size to the bound region. The sequence of the footprint reveals the binding sequence of the protein and therefore often allows the identification of the regulatory proteins.
John Stamatoyannopoulos and colleagues scaled this approach to a genome-wide level by using a technique for massively parallel sequencing of the DNase I-cleaved genomic DNA. They systematically mapped all footprints across the yeast genome and analyzed them for new and known protein binding patterns. As a result the authors were able to draw an intricate map of regulatory proteins along the entire yeast DNA.
This technique can be adapted to any organism with a sequenced genome and will allow new insights into the fine-scale architecture of genome regulation.
Author contact:
John Stamatoyannopoulos (University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA)
Tel: +1 206 616 2672; E-mail: [email protected]
[9] And finally…Nature: Stellar evolution: Is it or isn’t it?
DOI: 10.1038/nature07934
Researchers have resolved an ongoing debate about whether a known stellar object was the progenitor of a massive supernova - just the second time such a link has been established. The object in question, a very massive star, should not have exploded when it did and may cause revisions to theories of star life cycles.
The death of stars in supernova explosions is one of the most important processes that shape our Universe, but our understanding of stellar evolution is incomplete. Only one single case, of supernova SN 1987A in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, has been previously detected.
The progenitor of supernova SN 2005gl was proposed to be an extremely luminous object, but the association was not robustly established until now. Avishay Gal-Yam and Douglas Leonard report in Nature this week observations from the Hubble Space Telescope that confirm it is indeed the star of SN 2005gl. It was a member of a class of stars that, according to standard thinking, should not have exploded in its inferred evolutionary state and the researchers believe that changes in current theory may be needed.
Author contact:
Avishay Gal-Yam (Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel)
Tel: +972 8 9342063; E-mail: [email protected]
Douglas Leonard (San Diego State University, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 619 594 2215; E-mail: [email protected]
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Items from other Nature journals to be published online at the same time and with the same embargo:
Nature (http://www.nature.com/nature)
[10] Fused has evolved divergent roles in vertebrate Hedgehog signalling and motile ciliogenesis
DOI: 10.1038/nature07883
NATURE CELL BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/naturecellbiology)
[11] Modularity of MAP kinases allows deformation of their signalling pathways
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1856
[12] STAT3 inhibition of gluconeogenesis is downregulated by SirT1
DOI: 10.1038/ncb1857
NATURE GENETICS (http://www.nature.com/naturegenetics)
[13] Many X-linked microRNAs escape meiotic sex chromosome inactivation
DOI: 10.1038/ng.338
[14] Natural variation at the DEP1 locus enhances grain yield in rice
DOI: 10.1038/ng.352
NATURE IMMUNOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/natureimmunology)
[15] Memory T cells in nonlymphoid tissue that provide enhanced local immunity during infection with herpes simplex virus
DOI: 10.1038/ni.1718
[16] Autophagy enhances the presentation of endogenous viral antigens on MHC class I molecules during HSV-1 infection
DOI: 10.1038/ni.1720
NATURE MATERIALS (http://www.nature.com/naturematerials)
[17] Anisotropic self-assembly of spherical polymer-grafted nanoparticles
DOI: 10.1038/nmat2404
[18] High-energy cathode material for long-life and safe lithium batteries
DOI: 10.1038/nmat2418
Nature MEDICINE (http://www.nature.com/naturemedicine)
[19] Bioluminescence imaging of myeloperoxidase activity in vivo
DOI: 10.1038/nm.1886
[20] Heterotypic interactions enabled by polarized neutrophil microdomains mediate thromboinflammatory injury
DOI: 10.1038/nm.1939
NATURE METHODS (http://www.nature.com/nmeth)
[21] SUnSET, a non-radioactive method to monitor protein synthesis
DOI: 10.1038/nmeth.1314
NATURE NANOTECHNOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/nnano)
[22] Tunnelling readout of hydrogen-bonding-based recognition
DOI:10.1038/nnano.2009.48
[23] An electric current spike linked to nanoscale plasticity
DOI:10.1038/nnano.2009.49
Nature NEUROSCIENCE (http://www.nature.com/natureneuroscience)
[24] Gating multiple signals through detailed balance of excitation and inhibition in spiking networks
DOI: 10.1038/nn.2276
[25] Transformation of odor representations in target areas of the olfactory bulb
DOI: 10.1038/nn.2288
[26] Phosphodiesterase 1C is dispensable for rapid response termination of olfactory sensory neurons
DOI: 10.1038/nn.2289
NATURE PHOTONICS (http://www.nature.com/nphoton)
[27] A gigahertz-bandwidth atomic probe based on the slow-light Faraday effect
DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2009.27
[28] Green light emission in silicon through slow-light enhanced third-harmonic generation in photonic- crystal waveguides
DOI:10.1038/nphoton.2009.28
[29] Imaging through nonlinear media using digital holography
DOI:10.1038/nphoton.2009.29
Nature PHYSICS (http://www.nature.com/naturephysics)
[30] Polychromatic dynamic localization in curved photonic lattices
DOI: 10.1038/nphys1221
[31] Tightly trapped acoustic phonons in photonic crystal fibres as highly nonlinear artificial Raman oscillators
DOI: 10.1038/nphys1217
[32] The quantum-optical Josephson interferometer
DOI: 10.1038/nphys1223
[33] Impulsive orientation and alignment of quantum-state-selected NO molecules
DOI: 10.1038/nphys1225
[34] Ultrafast optical rotations of electron spins in quantum dots
DOI: 10.1038/nphys1226
Nature STRUCTURAL & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY (http://www.nature.com/natstructmolbiol)
[35] Bacterial frataxin CyaY is the gatekeeper of iron-sulfur cluster formation catalyzed by IscS
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1579
[36] Bases in the anticodon loop of tRNAAla(GGC) prevent misreading
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1580
[37] A sequence element that tunes Escherichia coli tRNAAla(GGC) to ensure accurate decoding
DOI: 10.1038/nsmb.1581
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[38] BRafV600E cooperates with Pten silencing to induce metastatic melanoma
DOI: 10.1038/ng.356
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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: 30
Melbourne: 15
Sydney: 28
CANADA:
Montreal: 16, 38
CHINA
Beijing: 14
Changchun: 33
Hangzhou: 14
Jinan: 14
Nanjing: 12
Shaanxi: 12
Shanghai: 14
FINLAND
Espoo: 23
Tampere: 23
FRANCE
Croissy-sur-Seine: 6
Jouy-en-Josas: 35
Marseille: 21
GERMANY
Bochum: 34
Bonn: 5
Dortmund: 34
Erlangen: 31
Essen: 5
Heidelberg: 25
Jena: 30
Lubeck: 5
Munich: 5
ISRAEL
Rehovot: 9
ITALY
Bolzano: 5
Cagliari: 5
Milan: 35
Naples: 35
Pavia: 32
Pisa: 32
Rome: 5
Siena: 35
Trieste: 32
JAPAN
Hiroshima: 23
Iwate: 18
Tokyo: 36
NETHERLANDS
Amsterdam: 33
Rotterdam: 4
The Hague: 4
POLAND
Katowice: 23
Poznan: 37
RUSSIA
St Petersburg: 34
SOUTH KOREA
Seoul: 18
SPAIN
Madrid: 20
SWITZERLAND
Basel: 25
Bellinzona: 1
Bern: 1
Zurich: 32
TAIWAN
Taipei: 10
UNITED KINGDOM
Durham: 27
Glasgow: 6
London: 6, 35
South Mimms: 6
St Andrews: 28
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Arizona
Tempe: 22
California
Costa Mesa: 3
Los Angeles: 3, 4, 10
San Diego: 8, 9
San Francisco: 7, 10, 38
Santa Barbara: 3
Santa Cruz: 3
Connecticut
New Haven: 12, 38
District of Columbia
Washington: 34
Illinois
Argonne: 17, 18
Chicago: 18
Evanston: 37
Maryland
Baltimore: 5, 26
Bethesda: 4
Gaithersburg: 17
Massachusetts
Boston: 4, 25, 38
Cambridge: 4, 11
Framingham: 4
Waltham: 24
Michigan
Ann Arbor: 5
Minnesota
Minneapolis: 23
Missouri
St Louis: 16, 19
Nevada
Reno: 13
New Jersey
Princeton: 17, 29
New York
New York: 1, 17, 20, 24, 35
Troy: 17
North Carolina
Winston-Salem: 5
Pennsylvania
Hershey: 16
Philadelphia: 20
Pittsburgh: 2
University Park: 17
Rhode Island
Providence: 12
South Carolina
Charleston: 3
Columbia: 3, 17
Texas
Austin: 17
Houston: 5, 38
San Antonio: 13
Utah
Salt Lake City:
Vermont
Burlington: 38
Washington
Seattle: 4, 8, 19
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)
Lily Khidr
Tel: +1 212 726 9324; 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)
Kalyani Narasimhan
Tel: +1 212 726 9319; 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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