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VOL.459 NO.7244 DATED 14 MAY 2009
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Optics: Bright future predicted for new lightbulb
Chemistry: Origins of RNA
Developmental biology: Beating heart enhances blood-cell formation
Nanotechnology: The might of light, on a chip
Infectious disease: Shape-changing secret of sleeping-sickness parasite
Genetics: Ocean waters teaming with small RNAs
Organic chemistry: Natural strategy for making terpenes
Ocean science: Floats go under to reveal important internal ocean pathway
Astrophysics: Making dust
And finally… Prehistoric pin-up
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Optics: Bright future predicted for new lightbulb (pp234-238)
A new type of light source, revealed in this week’s Nature, has the potential to outperform fluorescent tubes.
Light-emitting diodes based on organic materials (known as OLEDs) are emerging as an attractive technology for a variety of light and display applications. Here, Sebastian Reineke and colleagues describe an improved structure for a white OLED using a high-refractive-index layer.
Its power efficiency is at least as high as that of standard fluorescent tubes but the team believes that higher efficiencies can be achieved, and also that cost can be reduced. These features will make their lights more environmentally friendly and more desirable.
CONTACT
Sebastian Reineke (Technische Universität Dresden, Germany)
Tel: +49 351 4633 5117; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Chemistry: Origins of RNA (pp 239-242; N&V)
A possible chemical explanation for the origin of nucleic acids is presented in this week’s Nature. The study sheds light on how life might have emerged on the early Earth, and resolves a long-standing debate.
At some point in the evolution of life, a molecule capable of storing genetic information must have formed by purely chemical means. The obvious candidate for this is the simplest nucleic acid - RNA. But scientists have previously questioned the idea that a molecule as complex as RNA could have assembled spontaneously.
RNA is made up of ribonucleotide building blocks, which are themselves made up from three separate components - a ‘base’ molecule, a sugar group and a phosphate. Until now, most people believed that the base, sugar and phosphate must have formed separately and then combined to form the ribonucleotide - but no feasible chemical reaction could be found to explain how they come together. John Sutherland and colleagues challenge this dogma by showing that for some ribonucleotides, the sugar and the base could have emerged from a common precursor molecule.
The team demonstrated such a synthesis in the laboratory, offering the first plausible chemical explanation for how ribonucleotides could have formed without help from enzymes. Their starting materials would all have been present on the early Earth, and the reaction conditions they used are consistent with geochemical models of environments on Earth during that time.
CONTACT
John Sutherland (The University of Manchester, UK)
Tel: +44 161 275 4614; E-mail: [email protected]
Jack Szostak (Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 617 726 5981; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Developmental biology: Beating heart enhances blood-cell formation (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08073
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 13 May 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 14 May, but at a later date. ***
Biomechanical forces have a key role in the development of early blood cells, a Nature paper reveals. The finding should help those wishing to direct the differentiation of stem cells into blood cells for research and therapeutic purposes, and opens a new perspective on the role of mechanical forces in biological processes.
Once the heartbeat begins in vertebrate embryos, cells lining various blood vessels begin to form blood cells. George Daley and colleagues show that shear stress imposed on the vascular wall at this early developmental stage has a strong positive influence on early blood-cell formation. Blocking the production of nitric oxide, a mediator of shear-stress-induced signalling, compromises blood-cell development.
The biomechanical forces applied in this study are approximately equal to those in the developing cardiovascular system, implying that the heartbeat, which sets up vascular flow and wall shear stress, is a direct biomechanical inducer of blood-cell formation.
CONTACT
George Daley (Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 919 2013; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Nanotechnology: The might of light, on a chip (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08061
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 13 May 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 14 May, but at a later date. ***
The power of light has been harnessed to an unprecedented degree on a silicon chip. The system, reported online in Nature, is likely to find use in high-speed data communication and precision measuring instruments.
Particles of light - photons - carry momentum and can be used to apply mechanical forces. Since the advent of lasers, researchers have harnessed this property to manipulate tiny objects such as DNA molecules and single atoms using optical ‘tweezers’. Oskar Painter and colleagues have taken this a step further by engineering a system of simple photonic structures on a silicon chip. By localizing light and mechanical energy in a tiny volume on the chip, they find that even a single photon of light produces a significant force. Their new device harnesses the power of light on the smallest scale yet. The increased sensitivity that this allows promises to find uses in optoelectronic gadgets as well as providing a test bed for fundamental physics.
CONTACT
Oskar Painter (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 626 395 8008; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Infectious disease: Shape-changing secret of sleeping-sickness parasite (pp 213-217)
A family of proteins that help influence the form of the African sleeping-sickness parasite is revealed in this week’s Nature. It’s thought that the protein family will prove a useful biomarker and may aid in the development of therapeutics.
Trypanosoma brucei is the cause of fatal disease in humans and livestock in sub-Saharan Africa. Keith Matthews and colleagues show that the PAD (proteins associated with differentiation) family of proteins helps the parasite respond to specific environmental cues that influence its form - the parasites have a complex life cycle, and exist in different forms in mammalian and insect hosts.
The proteins are expressed on the surface of the transmission-competent ‘stumpy-form’ parasites in the bloodstream. When PAD expression is abolished, the ability to change shape in response to key environmental cues is diminished.
CONTACT
Keith Matthews (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Tel: +44 131 651 3639; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Genetics: Ocean waters teaming with small RNAs (pp 266-269)
The ocean’s water column contains unexpectedly large numbers of diverse small RNAs that influence gene function, a Nature paper reveals.
Small RNAs, a newly recognized functional component of microbial cells, are short snippets of RNA that do not code for proteins. Those identified here may represent a diverse array of catalytic and regulatory elements, including some riboswitches - RNA fragments that bind to small target molecules and influence gene expression.
The discovery, reported by Edward DeLong and colleagues, was made possible thanks to a technique called metatranscriptomics, which enables RNA molecules from uncultured microbial communities to be analysed. Previously, only laboratory-grown microbial strains had been studied in this way.
CONTACT
Edward DeLong (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 253 5271; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] Organic chemistry: Natural strategy for making terpenes (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08043
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 13 May 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 14 May, but at a later date. ***
A new method for making terpenes, inspired by the logic of how they are made in nature, is reported online this week in Nature. The group of compounds includes menthol, cholesterol and the chemotherapy drug Taxol.
The two-phase method, devised by Phil Baran and Ke Chen, first sees a hydrocarbon skeleton assembled, which is then subjected to a series of site-selective oxidation reactions. The duo demonstrates proof of principle by using their efficient approach to make five chiral terpenes, each ‘handed’ in a particular direction.
Organic chemists often devise synthetic routes for molecules by mimicking enzyme reactions, but generally, such syntheses target individual compounds. In contrast, the new strategy is more general, and provides a framework that could be applied to other members of the terpene family.
CONTACT
Phil Baran (Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 858 784 7373; E-mail: [email protected]
[8] Ocean science: Floats go under to reveal important internal ocean pathway (pp 243-247)
A two-year study of real and simulated floats has revealed a hitherto unappreciated internal ocean pathway that connects the Labrador Sea with the tropics and subtropics. Our oceans act as a global mixing bowl for heat and carbon dioxide, so the findings are relevant to future predictions of global climate change.
Most of the floats (both real and modelled) followed the internal pathway and not the Deep Western Boundary Current, which was previously thought to be the main pathway linking the Labrador Sea with the Atlantic Ocean, say Amy Bower and colleagues in this week’s Nature. It’s known that the export of Labrador Sea Water strongly affects the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, the large-scale ocean mixing driven by global density gradients. To understand global climate change, it is essential to determine by what pathways climate change signals are transported throughout the global ocean. The authors point out that the influence of this internal pathway should not be ignored.
CONTACT
Amy Bower (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 508 289 2781; E-mail: [email protected]
[9] & [10] Astrophysics: Making dust (pp 224-226; 227-229; N&V)
Researchers describe new mechanisms for making and transporting crystalline dust in two papers this week in Nature. The results have implications for our understanding of the early Solar System.
Attila Juhasz and colleagues find the signature of crystalline dust after a young star flared, whereas archival data showed no sign of it before the flare. As most stars — including our Sun — probably produced similar eruptions during their youth, crystalline grains in comets and meteorites in our Solar System might be messengers of past eruptions, having been formed in a ‘melting pot’ around the outbursting young Sun.
Dejan Vinković investigates the mixing of large crystalline dust particles in the protoplanetary nebula around the young Sun. Crystalline dust exists in comets, but these formed in regions too cold to convert the amorphous dust created in the winds of other stars to the crystalline form, so somehow they were transported from where they were created — presumably close to the Sun — to the outer Solar System. By implication, the same process should occur around other young stars. Vinković reports that infrared radiation arising from the dusty disk can loft grains bigger than one micrometre out of the inner disk, where they are pushed outwards by stellar radiation pressure while gliding above the disk. Grains re-enter the disk at radii where it is too cold to produce sufficient infrared radiation pressure support for a given grain size and solid density.
CONTACT
Attila Juhasz (Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany) Author paper [9]
Tel: +49 6221 528 328; E-mail: [email protected]
Dejan Vinković (University of Split, Croatia) Author paper [10]
Tel: +385 91 732 9051; E-mail: [email protected]
Aigen Li (University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 573 884 1390; E-mail: [email protected]
[11] And finally… Prehistoric pin-up (pp 248-252; N&V)
Six fragments of carved ivory recovered from the Hohle Fels in Germany represent the oldest figurative art yet discovered. Dating to at least 35,000 years ago, the Venus has grotesquely exaggerated sexual features and is 5,000 years older than well-known ‘Venuses’ from the Gravettian culture.
Figurative art is often seen as important in measuring advanced communication in history. Although abstract depictions have been documented at southern African sites that date back to 75,000 years ago, the earliest figurative representations were previously estimated to be between 30 and 40 thousand years old. Nicholas Conard and colleagues describe in Nature this week, how they put the pieces together and realised the importance of their discovery. They conclude that because no other depictions are known at this date, this kind of female iconography may originate from the Hohle Fels region.
CONTACT
Nicholas Conard (Tübingen University, Germany)
Tel: +49 7071 297 2416; E-mail: [email protected]
Paul Mellars (University of Cambridge, UK) N&V author
Tel: +1 631 751 0555; E-mail: [email protected]
Please note this author is currently travelling and is best contacted between 0700 and 1000 US Eastern Time. Outside of this time, he is best contacted through:
Alison Howard (Stony Brook University, NY, USA)
Tel: +1 631 632 5800; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[12] Thermal vestige of the zero-temperature jamming transition (pp 230-233)
[13] qiRNA, a novel type of small interfering RNA induced by DNA damage (pp 274-277)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 13 May 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 14 May, but at a later date. ***
[14] Cohesins form chromosomal cis-interactions at the developmentally regulated IFNG locus
DOI: 10.1038/nature08079
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
CROATIA
Split: 10
FINLAND
Helsinki: 13
GERMANY
Dresden: 1
Heidelberg: 9
Kiel: 8
Tubingen: 11
HUNGARY
Budapest: 9
NETHERLANDS
Leiden: 9
UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge: 14
Edinburgh: 5
London: 14
Manchester: 2
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
La Jolla: 7
Pasadena: 4
Illinois
Chicago: 12
Indiana
Indianapolis: 3
Massachusetts
Boston: 3
Cambridge: 6
Woods Hole: 8
North Carolina
Durham: 8
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia: 12
West Chester: 12
Texas
Dallas: 13
PRESS CONTACTS…
From North America and Canada
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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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