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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.460 NO.7252 DATED 09 JULY 2009
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Space science: Going the distance
Longevity: Drug extends lifespan of mice
Palaeoclimate: The greening of the Earth
Genomics: A Korean genome sequenced
Commentary: Getting the most out of nanotechnology
Astronomy: The role of black holes in galaxy evolution
Oceanography: Late Cretaceous ocean flux
And finally… Sorting nanotubes with DNA
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Space science: Going the distance (pp 237-239)
Astronomers have found the most distant supernovae yet, by looking back through archival data.
Supernovae are luminous stellar explosions. The most common type come from massive — and therefore short-lived — stars. They can in principle be seen in very distant galaxies, and therefore could probe conditions in the early Universe. But the sky is big and current telescopes cannot monitor it all the time.
This week in Nature, Jeff Cooke and colleagues apply a method that takes advantage of the exceptional properties of a specific sub-class of supernovae, known as type IIn. These supernovae are luminous core-collapse explosions that are bright in the ultraviolet, not the visible range accessible to ground-based telescopes. But when seen at large distances, the peak ultraviolet light is redshifted to the visible, near-infrared end of the spectrum. Searching through archival data for galaxies that have brightened and faded revealed the candidate supernovae. Because the type IIn objects have bright emission lines that persist for 3–5 years, Cooke was able to obtain new observations to confirm the redshifts, two of which are the most distant supernovae seen to date.
CONTACT
Jeff Cooke (University of Cailfornia, Irvine, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 949 824 9257; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Longevity: Drug extends lifespan of mice (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08221
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 08 July 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 09 July, but at a later date. ***
A drug used by transplant recipients to stop them rejecting their new organ can significantly extend the lifespan of mice, finds a paper published online this week in Nature.
Rapamycin is a bacterial product originally found in a soil sample from Rapa Nui, or Easter Island. It targets TOR, a kinase that regulates protein translation, cell growth and cell metabolism in response to environmental cues. Reducing TOR function has already been shown to extend the life of yeast, nematode worms and flies, but now David Harrison and colleagues report the effect for the first time in mammals.
The team fed rapamycin to mice late in their life — 600 days of age — and showed that the median and maximal lifespan of treated animals was extended by 9–14%. Currently, the only way to extend the life of a rodent is by severely restricting its diet, so this marks the first report of a pharmacological intervention that lengthens the life of mammals.
In a related News & Views article, Matt Kaeberlein and Brian Kennedy warn that "healthy individuals should not consider taking rapamycin to slow ageing — the potential immunosuppressive effects of this compound alone are sufficient to caution against this." But it's hoped that the finding will lead to the development of interventions for the treatment and prevention of age-related diseases.
CONTACT
David Harrison (The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME, USA)
Tel: +1 207 288 6357; E-mail: [email protected]
Matt Kaeberlein (University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 206 543 4849; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Palaeoclimate: The greening of the Earth (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08213
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 08 July 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 09 July, but at a later date. ***
An abrupt greening of the Earth took place in the Neoproterozoic era just before the first of the great glaciations, suggests a study in Nature this week.
The Neoproterozoic was the period from around 1,000 million to 542 million years ago. It is thought that carbon isotope variations in Neoproterozoic rocks are related to major perturbations of the global carbon cycle. Paul Knauth and Martin Kennedy compile isotope data from over 20,000 ancient carbonate rocks and propose that the carbon isotope variations in Neoproterozoic carbonates could be a signature of groundwater influx of photosynthetic carbon from terrestrial plant mass to the coastal environment. The influx of terrestrial carbon is not apparent in carbonates older than about 850 million years, and the authors infer an explosion of photosynthesizing communities on late Precambrian land surfaces.
CONTACT
Paul Knauth (Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA)
Tel: +1 480 965 2867; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Genomics: A Korean genome sequenced (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08211
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 08 July 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 09 July, but at a later date. ***
The genome sequence of a Korean individual (AK1) is revealed in this week’s Nature, adding further to our understanding of ethnic diversity and the individual variation underlying complex traits and disease. The five human genome sequences reported to date span three distinct geographic regions: a Yoruba African, two individuals of northwest European descent (Craig Venter and James Watson) and a person from China and from Korea.
Jeong-Sun Seo and colleagues used a combinatorial ‘belt and braces’ approach to carefully characterize sequence and structural variation, and then link some of these changes to medically relevant traits. In particular, they focus on single nucleotide changes or ‘SNPs’. With the exception of the Yoruban genome, Korean SNP diversity was higher than that of the other sequenced genomes. SNPs linked to complex traits are highlighted, including some linked to disease, and some that could affect the efficacy, dosing or toxicity of certain drugs.
Copy number variations — differences in the number of particular DNA segments compared between individuals — are particularly carefully scrutinized in this study. Like many northeast Asians, AK1 was noted to lack the gene for the leukocyte immunoglobulin-like receptor.
It’s hoped that the integration of several human whole genome sequences derived from multiple ethnic groups will assist in understanding genetic ancestry, migration patterns and population bottlenecks.
CONTACT
Jeong-Sun Seo (Seoul National University, Republic of Korea)
Tel: +82 2740 8246; E-mail: [email protected]
Commentary: Getting the most out of nanotechnology (pp 174)
Annual investment in nanotechnology research and development has reached US$18 billion globally with hundreds of substances and nanotechnology-based products on the market. Yet national efforts to gather information on what nanomaterials are being produced by industry have largely failed, say Andrew Maynard and David Rejeski in a Commentary in this week’s Nature.
Voluntary reporting schemes in the United Kingdom and United States had received very few submissions by the end of 2008. Two nations — Canada and France — are planning mandatory reporting schemes in the hope of collecting data that will inform regulators and the public about the safety and potential risks of using nanomaterials.
The authors welcome these moves towards mandatory reporting, but say that greater oversight and more transparent data sharing will be needed. Without better information flow between organizations, they say, the potential for consumers and industry to gain from the development of safe nanotechnology will be limited.
CONTACT
Andrew Maynard (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC, USA)
Tel: +1 202 691 4311; Mobile: +1 202 664 3316; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Astronomy: The role of black holes in galaxy evolution (pp 213-219)
How do black holes shape galaxy evolution? A review of recent research this week in Nature attempts to tackle this fundamental but unanswered question.
The massive black holes found at the centre of most galaxies, including our own, release prodigious amounts of energy that power spectacular phenomena such as quasars and active galactic nuclei. If just a tiny fraction of that energy were absorbed into the host galaxy it could stop star formation in its tracks by heating and ejecting the ambient gas. Andrea Cattaneo and colleagues suggest that in elliptical galaxies, which contain cooler gas and much fewer young stars than spiral galaxies, black holes act as a ‘pension fund’ by kicking out just enough energy to help the galaxy live out its retirement comfortably.
CONTACT
Andrea Cattaneo (Astrophysical Institute Potsdam, Germany)
Tel: +49 331 7499 537; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Oceanography: Late Cretaceous ocean flux (pp 254-258)
A remarkable seasonally resolved sediment record from the Late Cretaceous Arctic Ocean is reported this week in Nature. Studying the oceans of the past in this way could yield important clues as to the behaviour of the Arctic Ocean during warm ‘greenhouse’ conditions.
Alan Kemp and colleagues analysed Arctic Ocean sediments from the Late Cretaceous epoch, around 65 to 99 million years ago. Their data reveals that seasonal marine productivity was probably driven by species of algae specifically adapted to survive in ‘stratified’ water, where the water is separated into layers of different temperature or salt concentration. This finding suggests that summers during this time period were ice free, but lithic grain analysis suggests that intermittent sea ice may have been present in the winter.
Although the species of diatom algae analysed were diverse during the Cretaceous, they are only represented by a few species in today’s oceans. But with increased carbon dioxide levels and warming currently driving increased stratification in the modern global ocean, marine productivity by organisms that are adapted to this environment may become more widespread.
CONTACT
Alan Kemp (National Oceanogaphy Centre, Southampton, UK)
Tel: +44 23 8059 2788; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] And finally… Sorting nanotubes with DNA (pp 250-253; N&V)
A new DNA-based method can sort and separate specific types of carbon nanotube from a mixture. Pure nanotubes are highly sought after for their use in electronics and other applications.
Using carbon nanotubes in electronics applications requires precise knowledge of their structure and electronic properties. But current methods for producing carbon nanotubes generate mixtures of tubes with different diameters and symmetry, or ‘chirality’. Until now it has been very challenging to disentangle these mixtures and purify single species.
In this week’s Nature, Ming Zheng and colleagues show that tailored DNA sequences — repeats of one purine plus one or more subsequent pyrimidines — can purify every single species in a nanotube mixture. The authors propose that these DNA sequences form particularly stable three-dimensional barrel structures when wrapped around a nanotube, which could be responsible for the selectivity.
CONTACT
Ming Zheng (Dupont Experimental Station, Wilmington, DE, USA)
Tel: +1 302 695 7136; E-mail: [email protected]
Mark Hersam (Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 847 491 2696; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[8] Mechanisms Promoting Translocations in Editing and Switching Peripheral B Cells (pp 231-236; N&V)
[9] Direct observation of correlations between individual photon emission events of a
microcavity laser (pp 245-249)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 08 July 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 09 July, but at a later date. ***
[10] Chd1 regulates open chromatin and pluripotency of embryonic stem cells
DOI: 10.1038/nature08212
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:
Toronto: 1
Victoria: 5
FRANCE
Lyon: 5
Marseille: 5
GERMANY
Bremen: 5, 9
Dortmund: 9
Magdeburg: 9
Potsdam: 5
Wurzburg: 9
ISRAEL
Jerusalem: 5, 10
Rehovot: 1
Tel Aviv: 5
PORTUGAL
Coimbra: 10
SOUTH KOREA
Seoul: 4
UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge: 5
Cardiff: 6
Durham: 5
Oxford: 1, 5
Southampton: 6
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Hayward: 4
Irvine: 1
Los Angeles: 10
Riverside: 3
San Francisco: 4, 5, 10
Santa Cruz: 5
Delaware
Wilmington: 7
Florida
Gainesville: 2
Maine
Bar Harbor: 2
Maryland
Bethesda: 2
Greenbelt: 5
Massachusetts
Boston: 4, 8
Cambridge: 8
Michigan
Ann Arbor: 2
New Mexico
Santa Fe: 4
New York
New York: 2
North Carolina
Winston-Salem: 2
Pennsylvania
Bethlehem: 7
Texas
Austin: 5
San Antonio: 2
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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