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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.460 NO.7258 DATED 20 AUGUST 2009
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Plant biology: SNORKELS help rice to keep its head above water
Stem cells: A model for drug screening
Opinion: Biologists napping while work is militarized
Astrophysics: Gravitational-wave detectors start to pull their weight
Oncology: Antioxidants reveal a darker side
Geology: Hydrating the mantle
Cell biology: Understanding protein function becomes light work
And finally… The indecisive mind
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Plant biology: SNORKELS help rice to keep its head above water (pp 1026-1030; N&V)
The discovery of ‘snorkel’ genes that enable rice to survive underwater promises to boost rice production in flood-prone areas.
Deepwater rice produces low yields but has the unique ability to elongate its stem with increasing water depth, helping the plant to keep its leaves above water. Other rice varieties produce higher yields but lack this ability and so cannot be grown in flood-prone areas.
In this week’s Nature, Motoyuki Ashikari and colleagues identified the genes SNORKEL1 and SNORKEL2 as regulators of the ‘deepwater response’. As water levels rise, accumulation of the plant hormone ethylene triggers expression of the SNORKEL genes, which in turn switches on rapid stem growth. When the researchers introduced the genes into rice that do not normally survive in deep water, they were able to rescue the plants from drowning.
It’s hoped that the findings will help researchers to breed rice that can be grown in lowland areas that are frequently flooded during the rainy season.
CONTACT
Motoyuki Ashikari (Nagoya University, Japan)
Tel: +81 52 789 5202; E-mail: [email protected]
Laurentius Voesenek (Utrecht University, The Netherlands) N&V author
Tel: +31 30 253 6849; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Stem cells: A model for drug screening (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08320
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 19 August 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 August, but at a later date. ***
Stem cells have been induced from patients with an extremely rare neurological disorder and their particular gene expression examined. The researchers not only gained insights into the disease, familial dysautonomia (FD), but went on to test the potency of potential drugs on the cells.
FD is a genetic condition that affects the nervous system, with the most common symptoms being reduced sensitivity to pain and temperature and the inability to produce tears. It affects major systems in the body and causes heart, breathing, digestive and vision problems.
Lorenz Studer and colleagues show the cells had low levels of the IKBKAP gene, which may suggest a mechanism for the disease at a cellular level. They also reveal defects in differentiation and migration of cells to the nervous system, which seem to be characteristic of the disease. The team go on to use the induced cells to validate the activity of various candidate drugs, illustrating the potential of this technology for modelling therapies using patient-specific cells.
CONTACT
Lorenz Studer (Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, New York, NY, USA)
Tel: +1 212 639 6126; E-mail: [email protected]
Opinion: Biologists napping while work is militarized (pp950-951)
Life scientists need to wise up: the increasing militarization of advances in biological sciences — especially neuroscience — could lead to the development of agents that alter physiological and mental states.
As the Meeting of Experts of the Biological Weapons Convention convenes this week in Geneva, Malcolm Dando argues in an Opinion article in this week's Nature, that recent developments in our understanding of signalling processes, human gene expression, biochemistry, synthetic biology and nanotechnology could "transform the biochemical-threat landscape". Our growing ability to identify crucial biochemical pathways, and then design compounds to disrupt them, massively expands the options for biochemical threats: there are likely to be thousands of potential molecular targets and numerous ways of disrupting each one.
"The Chemical Weapons Convention urgently needs modifying if it is to continue to help ensure that the modern life sciences are not used for hostile purposes," Dando writes. He further argues that the use of novel non-lethal agents for law enforcement should be prohibited, or at least heavily restricted.
CONTACT
Malcolm Dando (University of Bradford, UK)
Please note this author is best contacted through:
Emma Banks (Media relations, University of Bradford, UK)
Tel: +44 1274 233 089; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Astrophysics: Gravitational-wave detectors start to pull their weight (pp 990-994; N&V)
A long-awaited milestone in gravitational-wave research is reported in this week’s Nature. For the first time, data from a gravitational-wave observatory have been used to constrain theoretical models of the early Universe.
Gravitational waves (or ‘gravity waves’) are ripples in space–time produced when large masses interact with each other — for example, when black holes collide or supernovae explode. Gravity waves are also thought to have arisen from various processes that may have taken place in the early Universe, such as the dramatic expansion known as inflation, or the phase transition that created the electromagnetic and weak forces. But detecting such gravity waves is extremely challenging, requiring measurements of distance changes much smaller than the size of an atomic nucleus but between objects separated by kilometres.
Now Vuk Mandic and colleagues report the results of a two-year period of data collection at LIGO, a gravitational-wave observatory comprising three detectors located in the US states of Washington and Louisiana. Although no gravity waves were detected, LIGO’s sensitivity is now good enough for this ‘non-detection’ to place tighter bounds on early-Universe processes than were possible using other kinds of astrophysical observations.
CONTACT
Vuk Mandic (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA)
Tel: +1 612 624 6844; E-mail: [email protected]
Marc Kamionkowski (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 626 395 2563; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Oncology: Antioxidants reveal a darker side (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08268
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 19 August 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 August, but at a later date. ***
The cancer-preventing reputation of antioxidants takes a hit with the discovery that they can sometimes promote the survival and proliferation of cancer cells. The finding, reported in this week's Nature, has implications for our understanding of cancer biology.
Normal epithelial cells die if they become detached from the structurally supportive extracellular matrix, but in breast cancer, cancer-causing genes such as erbB2 can provide survival signals to detached tumorigenic cells. Joan Brugge and colleagues show that cell detachment also causes metabolic defects that can be rescued by erbB2 and — unexpectedly — by antioxidants.
The antioxidants seem to work by boosting cellular energy levels via fatty acid oxidation. The findings are surprising but the work was done in cell culture and there is as yet no evidence that there are any implications for patients.
CONTACT
Joan Brugge (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 432 3974; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Geology: Hydrating the mantle (pp 1003-1006)
Scientists have developed a three-dimensional model for studying the water content of various regions of the Earth’s mantle. The model, published in Nature this week, shows that underneath the central Pacific Ocean the mantle is relatively dry, but towards the Pacific rim there is a hydrated zone, as slabs of oceanic plate sink beneath the continental crust.
Water plays a fundamental role in the Earth’s interior, influencing the melting temperature and viscosity of rocks in the mantle, and how fast mantle plumes form. Previous studies have used either regional-scale or global models in one dimension to constrain mantle water content, but they have produced conflicting results.
Anna Kelbert and colleagues designed an integrated global three-dimensional model of electrical conductivity variations in the Earth’s mantle. As electrical conductivity increases with the presence of water, they were able to map the areas of the mantle that were the most hydrated. The study reveals huge variations in conductivity in the mantle transition zone, about 410–660 kilometres below the Earth’s surface. High conductivities were found associated with cold, subducting slabs around the Pacific margin that carry hydrated minerals into the mantle; whereas the central Pacific was ten times more electrically resistive and therefore compatible with a dry mantle.
CONTACT
Anna Kelbert (Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA)
Tel: +1 541 737 4113; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] & [7] Cell biology: Understanding protein function becomes light work (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08241
DOI: 10.1038/nature08242
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 19 August 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 August, but at a later date. ***
A new technique that uses light to manipulate the activity of a protein at precise times and places within a living cell should boost studies of protein function.
The approach, revealed by Klaus Hahn and colleagues in this week’s Nature, uses light to reversibly activate a genetically modified version of the Rac1 enzyme, a ubiquitous cellular protein that influences the dynamics of the cell’s inner scaffolding or ‘cytoskeleton’. Pulses of the laser light caused cultured cells to extend localized protrusions, and could be used to direct cell movement.
The team believe that their approach is applicable to other proteins and is an advance on previous light-directed methods that used toxic wavelengths, disrupted the cell membrane or could ‘switch’ proteins ‘on’ but not ‘off’.
In a related paper Gaudenz Danuser and colleagues look at how three different proteins that control cytoskeletal dynamics – RhoA, Rac1 and Cdc42 – function during cell migration. Using biosensors to view the proteins simultaneously, the team use a computational approach to define the relationships between individual molecules. Their technique paves the way to defining the dynamics of larger groups of proteins in signalling networks.
CONTACT
Klaus Hahn (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA) Author paper [6]
Tel: +1 919 843 2775; E-mail: [email protected]
Gaudenz Danuser (The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA) Author paper [7]
Tel: +1 858 7847096; E-mail: [email protected]
[8] And finally… The indecisive mind (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08275
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 19 August 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 August, but at a later date. ***
The indecisiveness of decision making does not end when we make up our minds. There is still continuous information processing as well as wavering on the initial decision, suggests a study published online this week in Nature.
People make decisions based on a complex, and often ambiguous, array of information. Theoretical neuroscientists have formed plausible models to explain how the brain processes the information, parsing through the noise to make a decision. It has previously been thought that once a decision has been made, it has been made for good.
Michael Shadlen and colleagues propose a contrary model. They had participants decide which direction to move a handle while they monitored hand trajectory throughout the decision making process. They discovered that in some instances, after participants started moving the handle in one direction, they then changed their minds to another direction. This suggests that information gathering still continued throughout the task although there was no other new information to process. Shadlen and colleagues now propose a model for decision making that is highly flexible and accounts for these last minute changes.
CONTACT
Michael Shadlen (University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA)
Tel: +1 206 616 4630; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[9] Evidence for an early prokaryotic endosymbiosis (pp 967-971)
[10] In situ Observation of Incompressible Mott-Insulating Domains in Ultracold Atomic Gases (pp 995-998)
[11] Neurotransmission selectively regulates synapse formation in parallel circuits in vivo (pp 1016-1020; N&V)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 19 August 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 them on this release to avoid multiple mailings they will not appear in print on 20 August, but at a later date. ***
[12] Direct observation of the binding state of the kinesin head to the microtubule
DOI: 10.1038/nature08259
[13] Histone H2A.Z cooperates with RNAi and heterochromatin factors to suppress antisense RNAs
DOI: 10.1038/nature08321
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
Perth: 3
FRANCE
Annecy-le-Vieux: 3
Nice: 3
Orsay: 3
Paris: 3
GERMANY
Essen: 7
Golm: 3
Hannover: 3
Heidelberg: 6
ITALY
Fisciano: 3
Perugia: 3
Pisa: 3
Rome: 3
Siena: 3
JAPAN
Fukuoka: 1
Nagoya: 1
Tsukuba: 1
Yokohama: 1
NETHERLANDS
Amsterdam: 3
RUSSIA
Moscow: 3
SWITZERLAND
Basel: 7
UNITED KINGDOM
Birmingham: 3
Cambridge: 8
Cardiff: 3
Didcot: 3
Glasgow: 3
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
La Jolla: 7
Los Angeles: 9
Pasadena: 3
San Jose: 3
Stanford: 3, 9
Florida
Gainesville: 3
Illinois
Chicago: 10
Indiana
Notre Dame: 4
Louisiana
Baton Rouge: 3
Livingston: 3
Maryland
Baltimore: 4
Bethesda: 13
College Park: 3
Frederick: 13
Massachusetts
Boston: 4
Cambridge: 3
Missouri
St Louis: 11
Montana
Bozeman: 3
New York
Bronx: 7
New York: 2, 3
Syracuse: 3
North Carolina
Chapel Hill: 6, 7
Oregon
Corvallis: 5
Eugene: 3
Texas
Brownsville: 3
Virginia
Ashburn: 8
Washington
Pullman: 3
Richmond: 3
Seattle: 8, 11
Wisconsin
Milwaukee: 3
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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