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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.459 NO.7248 DATED 11 JUNE 2009
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Earth Science: Typhoons trigger slow earthquakes
Infectious disease: New mechanism implicated in tuberculosis
Astrophysics: Grounded eclipse observations yield unique insights
Cell biology: Fat cells influence blood formation
Material science: Mind the bandgap
And finally… Worlds in collision: what are the chances?
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Earth Science: Typhoons trigger slow earthquakes (pp 833-836)
Taiwan’s slow earthquakes can be triggered by typhoons, a study in this week’s Nature suggests. The finding might also explain the puzzling lack of very large earthquakes on an island perched on one of the most active plate boundaries in the world.
Slow earthquakes, such as those recorded in Taiwan and Japan, release energy gradually over a period of hours to months. Alan Linde and colleagues now show that low pressure from passing typhoons can trigger slow earthquakes in eastern Taiwan. They conjecture that repeating slowearthquakes could be segmenting stressed areas, thus inhibiting the occurrence beneath Taiwan of great earthquakes, which generally require a long, continuous seismic rupture.
CONTACT
Alan Linde (Carnegie Institution of Washington, DC, USA)
Tel: +1 202 478 8835; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Infectious disease: New mechanism implicated in tuberculosis (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08123
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 10 June 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 11 June, but at a later date. ***
A previously unrecognized mechanism has been shown to have a role in the virulence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that cause tuberculosis. It’s hoped that the finding, reported in this week’s Nature, will aid therapeutic development.
The bacterium directly intoxicates infected host cells by producing the enzyme adenylate cyclase, William Bishai and colleagues show. This boosts levels of the intracellular signalling molecule cyclic AMP, a device presumably used by the bacterium to subvert host cell signalling pathways to its own ends.
Mycobacterium tuberculosis contains at least one virulence-related adenylate cyclase gene that facilitates the delivery of bacterial-derived cyclic AMP into the cytoplasm of specific immune cells. This is in direct contrast to other bacterial species that modulate host cyclic AMP levels via secreted extracellular adenylate cyclase toxins, and as such represents a new model in bacterial pathogenesis.
CONTACT
William Bishai (Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA)
Tel: +1 410 955 3507; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] & [4] Astrophysics: Grounded eclipse observations yield unique insights (814-816; 789-795)
Earth’s transmission spectrum has been measured from ground-based observations of a recent lunar eclipse. The data, reported in this week’s Nature, should prove important reference material as the search for Earth-like planets continues.
Enric Pallé and colleagues observed light reflected from the Moon towards the Earth during a lunar eclipse on 16 August 2008. This allowed them to measure the Earth’s spectrum as if observed from an astronomical distance during a transit in front of the Sun. The transmission spectrum of a planet provides information about the chemical composition of its atmosphere, and the team find ‘fingerprints’ of the Earth’s upper atmosphere and of the major atmospheric constituent, nitrogen. Some biologically relevant atmospheric features that are weak in the reflection spectrum, such as oxygen and water, are much stronger in the transmission spectrum, and stronger than predicted by modelling.
Ground-based measurements of solar eclipses are also yielding unique observations, Jay Pasachoff says in a Nature review article. A new generation of observations is reaching spatial, temporal and spectral resolutions that are inaccessible from space, directly complementing satellite studies. Observations of the Sun during total eclipses have led to major discoveries, such as the existence of helium and the corona’s high temperature.
CONTACT
Enric Pallé (Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Tenerife, Spain) Author paper [3]
Tel: +34 922 605268; E-mail: [email protected]
Jay Pasachoff (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA) Author paper [4]
Tel: +1 626 395 4268; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Cell biology: Fat cells influence blood formation (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08099
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 10 June 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 11 June, but at a later date. ***
Once thought to be little more than passive space fillers in the bone marrow, fat cells are now credited with having a major physiological role in blood-cell formation, according to a Nature paper published online this week.
Fat-cell-rich bone-marrow regions contain fewer blood-forming stem cells and progenitors than fat-cell-free areas, George Daley and colleagues report. Also, genetically engineered 'fat-free' mice generate new blood cells more quickly than wild-type animals after bone-marrow transplant. A similar effect was also seen in mice treated with a drug that blocks fat-cell production.
The results suggest that fat cells negatively regulate blood-cell production in the bone marrow, and provide a rationale for testing the use of fat-cell-inhibiting drugs in bone-marrow transplant recipients.
CONTACT
George Daley (Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 919 2013; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Material science: Mind the bandgap (pp 820-823)
The realization of a semiconductor with tunable ‘bandgap’ is reported this week in Nature. The research should boost the design and functionality of future electronic devices.
The electronic bandgap is a fundamental property of semiconductors and insulators that determines their electrical and optical response. Feng Wang and colleagues reveal a bilayer graphene-based device with an electrically controllable bandgap. This is a huge improvement over conventional semiconductors, where the electronic bandgap is fixed by the material’s crystal structure, and further establishes graphene’s importance in future electronics.
CONTACT
Feng Wang (University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 510 643 3275; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] And finally… Worlds in collision: what are the chances? (pp 817-819; N&V)
The chaotic nature of the Solar System is known to lead to changes in planetary orbits, and has in the past influenced the architecture of the Solar System that we see today. According to a new numerical study, these deviations can literally be even more striking, potentially leading to a collision of Earth with Mercury, Mars or Venus. There's no need to worry, however — if such a collision does take place, and the chances are relatively small, it won't be for a few billion years.
Previous planetary orbital studies were based on statistical simulations that used averaged equations for the motion of planets. However, these equations become flawed when considering planets that are about to collide. In the present study, published this week in Nature, Jacques Laskar and Mickael Gastineau use a non-averaged model of planetary motion which considers the whole Solar System in the next five billion years and takes into account general relativity.
The simulation looked at 2,501 scenarios in which around 25, or one per cent, led to a disruption of Mercury’s orbit, and one led to a collision with Earth. Another scenario in about three billion years saw Mars and Earth orbit within 794 kilometres of each other, as well as five cases in the next five billion years in which Mars would be ejected from the Solar System. In almost 200 scenarios, there will be a collision between two celestial bodies — and 48 of the scenarios include the Earth.
CONTACT
Jacques Laskar (Observatoire de Paris, France)
Tel: +33 1 40 51 21 14; E-mail: [email protected]
Mickael Gastineau (Observatoire de Paris, France)
Tel: +33 1 40 51 20 05; E-mail: [email protected]
Gregory Laughlin (University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 831 419 3726; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[8] Histone H4 lysine-16 acetylation regulates cellular lifespan (pp 802-807)
[9] Alkylated DNA damage flipping bridges base and nucleotide excision repair (pp 808-813)
[10] The proportionality of global warming to cumulative carbon emissions (pp 829-832)
[11] An unusual carbon–carbon bond cleavage reaction during phosphinothricin biosynthesis (pp 871-874)
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.
CANADA:
Montreal: 10
FRANCE
Paris: 7
SPAIN
Tenerife: 3
TAIWAN
Taipei: 1
UNITED KINGDOM
Bangor: 9
Exeter: 10
Manchester: 9
Newcastle: 9
Sheffield: 9
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Berkeley: 6, 9
La Jolla: 9
Pasadena: 4
District of Columbia
Washington: 1
Florida
Orlando: 3
Illinois
Urbana: 11
Kentucky
Lexington: 9
Maryland
Baltimore: 2
Massachusetts
Boston: 5
Williamstown: 4
Minnesota
Minneapolis: 9
Missouri
Kansas City: 8
Pennsylvania
Hershey: 9
Philadelphia: 8
Washington
Seattle: 8
PRESS CONTACTS…
From North America and Canada
Neda Afsarmanesh, 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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