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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.464 NO.7286 DATED 11 MARCH 2010
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Physics: Relativity writ large
Genetics: A genetic basis for domestication
Genetics: The power of RNA sequencing
Materials science: A versatile shape-shifting polymer
Cancer: Prostate cancer therapy a double-edged sword
HIV: Complex immunology
Opinion: Accelerating HIV vaccine development
Atmospheric chemistry: Chlorine in the air
Physics: Putting a spin on electrical signal transmission
And finally… Biology: Chicken cells possess sexual identity
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Physics: Relativity writ large (pp 256-258; N&V)
In Nature this week, scientists test Einstein’s theory of general relativity and conclude that it really does work on length scales of about 2 to 50 megaparsecs at a redshift of 0.32. The test potentially allows for definitive discrimination between general relativity and other theories of gravity, though the precision of the current measurement is insufficient to do more than exclude some fringe models.
Within the framework of general relativity, gravity arises from masses ‘warping’ space-time. While general relativity has so far been very successful, it has not yet been sufficiently tested over large distances, and precise experiments have been carried out only within the Solar System.
Reinabelle Reyes and colleagues present the first application of a test to see whether general relativity does apply at large scales. They define a quantity known as EG that combines measures of weak gravitational lensing, galaxy clustering, and the growth rate of large-scale structure, and measure its value to be about 0.39, in agreement with the general relativistic prediction of around 0.4.
CONTACT
Reinabelle Reyes (Princeton University, NJ, USA)
Tel: +1 609 258 0629; E-mail: [email protected]
J. Anthony Tyson (University of California, Davis, CA, USA) N&V Author
Tel: +1 530 752 3830; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Genetics: A genetic basis for domestication (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08832
*** This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 10 March 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 March, but at a later date. ***
A putative genetic basis for chicken domestication is described in this week’s Nature. The study has direct applications to animal breeding and enhances the importance of the domestic chicken as a model organism for biomedical research.
Leif Andersson and colleagues describe a number of different DNA changes thought to have had a prominent role in the domestication of chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) from their major wild ancestor, the red jungle fowl (Gallus gallus). The most striking change occurs in a DNA region that encodes the thyroid stimulating hormone receptor (TSHR), a protein that has a key role in metabolism and vertebrate reproductive timing.
The pattern of genetic variation at this region indicates that it might be a chicken ‘domestication locus’ — a region of DNA that was positively selected for during chicken domestication. The study sheds light on the genetic changes that can underpin rapid evolutionary adaptations.
CONTACT
Leif Andersson (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Tel: +46 184 714 904; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] & [4] Genetics: The power of RNA sequencing (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08872 – paper [3]
DOI: 10.1038/nature08903 – paper [4]
*** These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 10 March 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 11 March, but at a later date. ***
RNA sequencing is a powerful tool for teasing apart the genetic mechanisms that underpin variation in gene expression, two Nature papers demonstrate.
Gene expression is the process by which information contained inside genes is used to make functional products such as proteins. This involves the transcription of DNA to RNA, which is then edited or ‘spliced’ en route to make the final protein product. Until now, studies of human gene expression variation have been done using microarrays, which tend to measure expression levels using one or a few probes targeting particular parts of each gene.
RNA sequencing, in contrast, allows expression levels to be measured across the entire length of a transcript. Joseph K. Pickrell and colleagues sequenced RNA from 69 cell lines derived from unrelated Nigerian individuals for whom extensive genotype information is known. By pooling the data together, the authors were able to identify many genetic determinants of gene expression variation, a goal that is central to medical and evolutionary genetics. Emmanouil T. Dermitzakis and colleagues characterize the messenger RNA (mRNA) of 60 Caucasian individuals. They provide a fine-scale view of RNA and identify genetic variants that affect its protein-expressing capacities.
The teams demonstrate several advantages of the technique, including increased sensitivity to detect variation in splicing and identify new transcripts. They also identify more than a thousand genes at which genetic variation influences overall expression levels or splicing.
CONTACT
Joseph Pickrell (University of Chicago, IL, USA) Author paper [3]
Tel: +1 773 834 9838; E-mail: [email protected])
Emmanouil Dermitzakis (University of Geneva, Switzerland) Author paper [4]
Tel: +41 22 37 95 483; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Materials science: A versatile shape-shifting polymer (pp 267-270)
A commercially available polymer, better known for its use in fuel cells, turns out to have a useful and unexpected property: it can ‘memorize’ and reversibly adopt at least three different shapes after being deformed at different temperatures.
The polymer, known as Nafion, or perfluorosulphonic acid (PFSA), is a thermoplastic material; it deforms easily at high temperatures, and freezes to a glassy state when cooled. Materials with glass transitions can sometimes exhibit ‘shape memory’ — that is, they can memorize a temporary shape and reversibly revert to their permanent shape on exposure to an external stimulus, such as heat. Some polymers can memorize more than one temporary shape, but this has required a reversible phase transition for each temporary shape. The difficulty of engineering polymers with multiple discrete phase transitions has thus limited the scope for multi-shape memory materials.
Although PFSA has only one glass transition, it is very broad, extending from ~55 °C to ~130 °C. In this week’s Nature, Tao Xie reports that PFSA is able to memorize at least three temporary shapes (longer, shorter and bent), provided that the deformations used to produce the shapes are performed at well separated temperatures above the onset of the glass transition. Because the effect works with arbitrarily chosen temperatures, it is highly tunable, and the author suggests that other polymers with broad glass transitions are likely to show similar tunable shape memory effects.
CONTACT
Tao Xie (General Motors Research & Development Center, Warren, MI, USA)
Tel: +1 586 947 2471; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Cancer: Prostate cancer therapy a double-edged sword (pp 302-305)
Androgen-ablating therapies, commonly used to treat prostate cancer, may indirectly promote the development of metastatic, hard-to-treat secondary tumours, a Nature paper suggests. Molecules involved in this process could be targeted therapeutically to improve patient prognosis.
In its early stages prostate cancer cells depend on androgens for their growth, so androgen-ablating therapies, such as prostatectomy, can be used effectively. But over time, the cancer often develops into an androgen-insensitive, therapy-resistant form with high mortality rates. This study, by Michael Karin and colleagues, explains why, labelling cellular signals from the dying primary tumour as the culprit.
Androgen ablation causes the death of androgen-dependent cells, but it also triggers a dangerous inflammatory response, the team show. B cells infiltrate the regressing tumours, where they secrete a molecule called lymphotoxin that activates pathways enabling androgen-independent growth.
Interfering with this process delays the appearance of androgen-independent prostate cancer by 3–4 weeks in a mouse model, and the team estimate that similar interventions could ‘buy’ prostate cancer patients undergoing ablation therapy an extra 2–3 years before the onset of androgen-independent secondary tumours.
CONTACT
Michael Karin (University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 858 534 1361; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] & [8] HIV: Complex immunology (pp 217-231)
Our fundamental approach to HIV vaccination needs to be re-examined, according to a Perspective in Nature this week. Herbert Virgin and Bruce Walker outline the questions that need to be answered by immunologists and the wider scientific community if an effective vaccine is to be produced. Current research approaches the problem by attempting to generate an immune response similar to that seen in natural infections, but the authors argue that this is unlikely to protect against HIV/AIDS.
The goal of preventing sexual mucosal transmission of HIV, the principal route of acquisition, remains a priority if the pandemic is to be contained and HIV ultimately eradicated. In a related Review article, focused on pathogenesis in tissues relevant to mucosal transmission, Ashley Haase argues that prevention strategies against HIV, both vaccines and microbicides, should target the earliest stage of infection.
CONTACT
Bruce Walker (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, Charlestown, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 724 7524; E-mail: [email protected] Author paper [7]
Ashley Haase (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA)
Tel: +1 612 624 4442; E-mail: [email protected] Author paper [8]
Opinion: Accelerating HIV vaccine development (pp 161-162)
The field of HIV vaccine research and development needs to institute flexible, large-scale, long-term funding mechanisms, ideally by the beginning of 2011, writes Wayne C. Koff in an Opinion piece this week. Koff argues that these initiatives should: invest in multidisciplinary teams rather than in projects; encourage translational-research programmes; attract scientific talent and technologies; provide greater incentives for industry participation; and focus on rational vaccine-design approaches.
Such mechanisms would foster greater innovation and shorten the timeline to a safe and effective HIV vaccine. They would also provide a framework for the rational design of vaccines against other global infectious diseases. Koff urges that they be formulated over the coming months and debated at the international AIDS Vaccine 2010 conference starting on 28 September in Atlanta, Georgia.
CONTACT
Wayne C. Koff (International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, New York, NY, USA)
Please contact via:
Rachel Steinhardt (Senior Director, Global Communications, International AIDS Vaccine Initiative)
Tel: +1 212 847 1045 or: +1 646 578 1672; E-mail: [email protected]
[9] Atmospheric chemistry: Chlorine in the air (pp 271-274; N&V)
Nitryl chloride production in the air above the USA is at a level similar to previous global estimates for coastal and marine regions, suggests a paper in this week’s Nature.
Chlorine atoms and chlorine oxides are highly reactive and can profoundly affect atmospheric composition, but conversion of inorganic chloride into chlorine atom precursors (such as nitryl chloridewas previously considered a coastal or marine phenomenon.
Joel A. Thornton and colleagues now report significant production of nitryl chloride in the USA, 1,400 kilometres inland at Boulder, Colorado. Levels were found to be unexpectedly large — reaching a third to a half of the maximum values observed in polluted coastal areas. The area far is removed from the influence of sea spray, but is possibly affected by chloride transport from coastal areas or inland salt beds and by anthropogenic sources, including combustion and transportation.
The findings suggest that a significant fraction of tropospheric chlorine atoms may arise directly from anthropogenic pollutants and be distributed over a relatively small area of the Earth’s surface — polluted continental and coastal regions.
CONTACT
Joel Thornton (University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA)
Tel: +1 206 543 4010; E-mail: [email protected]
Roland von Glasow (University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK) N&V Author
Tel: +44 1603 593 204; E-mail: [email protected]
[10] Physics: Putting a spin on electrical signal transmission (pp 262-266)
A magnetic insulating material has been used to carry an electrical signal over a macroscopic distance between two conductors. This counterintuitive feat, reported in this week’s Nature, is accomplished by the conversion of an electric current in the conducting material into a ‘spin wave’, which can propagate in the insulator.
Electrons have both an electric charge and an intrinsic angular momentum, or ‘spin’. In electrical conductors, such as metals, electrons can flow freely, carrying electric currents. These conduction electrons can also carry spin currents, but only over very short distances — typically less than a micrometre. In magnetic insulators, such as some metal oxides, the electrons cannot flow, but can still transmit a signal by coherent motion of their spins. These ‘spin waves’ can propagate over much greater distances — millimetres or even centimetres.
Eiji Saitoh and colleagues demonstrate the interconversion of electric currents and spin waves in a hybrid structure comprising the magnetic insulator yttrium iron garnet (Y3Fe5O12) and two platinum electrodes. An electric current applied to the first electrode is first converted to a spin current in the platinum; this induces a spin wave in the garnet, which travels one millimetre to the second interface. There, the reverse process happens: the spin wave induces a spin current in the platinum, which then generates a voltage that can drive an electric current. In this way, the electrical signal is transmitted through the insulating garnet.
CONTACT
Eiji Saitoh (Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan)
Tel: +81 22 215 2021; E-mail: [email protected]
[11] And finally… Biology: Chicken cells possess sexual identity (pp 237-242; N&V)
Sex determination in chickens is a very different process to sex determination in mammals, suggests a Nature paper that demonstrates an inherent ‘sex-identity’ in somatic chicken cells.
Michael Clinton and colleagues studied rare, naturally occurring chimaeric chicken embryos in which one side of the animal appears female and the other male. Female cells transplanted into a male environment retained a female identity, whereas male cells transplanted into a female environment retained a male identity.
The study suggests that avian somatic (non-sex) cells posses a cell-autonomous sex identity that influences their response to developmental and hormonal signals. This is quite different to the mammalian process of sex determination, where embryos are considered sexually indifferent until the action of a sex-determining gene initiates gonadal differentiation. The authors also speculate that the new model may not be restricted to birds.
CONTACT
Michael Clinton (Edinburgh University, UK)
Tel: +44 131 527 4222; E-mail: [email protected]
Blanche Capel (Duke University, Durham, NC, USA) N&V Author
Tel: +1 919 684 6390; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[12] Deviations from a uniform period spacing of gravity modes in a massive star (pp 259-261)
[13] Systematic genetic analysis of muscle morphogenesis and function in Drosophila (pp 287-291)
[14] The cells and peripheral representation of sodium taste in mice (pp 297-301)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 10 March 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 11 March, but at a later date. ***
[15] A computational model of teeth and the developmental origins of morphological variation
DOI: 10.1038/nature08838
[16] MONOPTEROS controls embryonic root initiation by regulating a mobile transcription factor
DOI: 10.1038/nature08836
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.
AUSTRIA
Vienna: 13
BELGIUM
Leuven: 12
Liege: 12
FINLAND
Helsinki: 15
FRANCE
Meudon: 12
Orsay: 12
GERMANY
Martinsried: 13
Tübingen: 16
JAPAN
Sendai: 10
Shizuoka: 10
Yokohama: 10
KOREA
Seoul: 1
NETHERLANDS
Nijmegen: 12
Wageningen: 16
POLAND
Wroclaw: 12
RUSSIA
Mosow: 6
SOUTH AFRICA
Pietermaritzburg: 11
SPAIN
Barcelona: 15
SWITZERLAND
Lausanne: 14
Stein: 16
Zurich: 1
UNITED KINGDOM
Edinburgh: 11
Roslin: 11
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Berkeley: 1
La Jolla: 6, 14
Colorado
Boulder: 9
Florida
Jupiter: 14
Maryland
Bethesda: 14
Massachusetts
Charlestown: 7
Michigan
Warren: 5
Minnesota
Minneapolis: 8
Missouri
St Louis: 7
New Jersey
Princeton: 1
New York
New York: 14
Stony Brook: 15
Ohio
Hiram: 9
Virginia
Ashburn: 14
Washington
Seattle: 9
PRESS CONTACTS…
From North America and Canada
Neda Afsarmanesh, Nature New York
Tel: +1 212 726 9231; 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
Rebecca Walton, Nature, London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4502; E-mail: [email protected]
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