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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.464 NO.7287 DATED 18 MARCH 2010
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Relics: Earlier colonisation of Flores
Quantum physics: A macroscopic mechanical milestone
Biology: Pain’s evolutionary past
Space science: A not-so-hot Jupiter
Cancer: ‘Pro-ageing’ therapy for cancer?
Astronomy: Dust-free quasars in the early Universe
Genomics: You can’t teach an old dog new SNPs
Genomics: Choosy plant pathogens
Materials science: ‘Smart dust’ brings new shine to spectroscopy
Physics: A quantum hybrid
And finally… Male seahorses have the last word
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Relics: Earlier colonisation of Flores (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08844
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 17 March at 1800 London time / 1400 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 18 March, but at a later date. ***
Findings from a new archaeological site on Flores, Indonesia, push back the age of hominins on the island by 200,000 years. The research, published this week in Nature, provides a new minimum age for hominins on Flores and challenges our understanding of the island’s history.
Even before the discovery of 18,000-year-old ‘hobbit’, Homo floresiensis, five years ago at Liang Bua cave, it was known that hominins had been on Flores for a long time. Stone tools from archaeological work in the Soa basin, to the east of Liang Bua cave, revealed that hominins had been on Flores some 800,000 years ago. Thanks to new dating methods, Adam Brumm and colleagues show that some stone tools on the island are around one million years old — hominins were on the island much earlier than previously understood. Researchers had thought that the arrival of hominins around 880,000 years ago caused a change in animal life, including the mass death of a giant tortoise and dwarf elephant.
The work suggests that earlier colonisation of the island is a possibility, and the team speculates that this population could have descended into the famous hobbits. Earlier fossils have not been discovered because the deposits in the Soa Basin are not old enough to have preserved this evidence of the initial arrival of hominins to the island, so other sites must be explored before this theory can be resolved.
CONTACT
Adam Brumm (University of Wollongong, Sydney, Australia)
Tel: +61 2 4221 5946; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Quantum physics: A macroscopic mechanical milestone (AOP; N&V)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08967
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 17 March at 1800 London time / 1400 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 18 March, but at a later date. ***
A mechanical device, large enough to be seen with the naked eye, has been shown to behave as a true quantum system. This long-sought achievement, published online this week in Nature, brings mechanical systems into the domain of quantum physics, and is a crucial first step towards investigating the ‘Schrödinger’s cat’ world of quantum effects in macroscopic objects.
To observe quantum behaviour in a macroscopic mechanical system, the system must be cooled to its ‘quantum ground state’, where all thermal vibrations are eliminated. Andrew Cleland and colleagues accomplish this by fabricating a mechanical resonator with a very high oscillation frequency — near 6 billion cycles per second — and cooling it to one-fortieth of a degree above absolute zero. The resonator, less than a micrometre thick and about 40 micrometres across, is coupled electrically to a well understood quantum device, a superconducting quantum bit or ‘qubit’, which the authors use to measure and control the resonator’s quantum state.
Cleland and colleagues demonstrate ground-state cooling of the mechanical resonator by using the qubit as a quantum thermometer, verifying the absence, with high probability, of even one quantum thermal excitation, or ‘phonon’. They then use the qubit to excite a single phonon in the resonator, and transfer the excitation many times between the resonator and the qubit, thereby taking the first steps towards complete quantum control of a mechanical system.
In an accompanying News and Views article, Markus Aspelmeyer discusses the implications of this result for new quantum technologies (using mechanical devices in quantum information processing) and, ultimately, for addressing the paradoxes that seem to arise when quantum theory is applied to the macroscopic world.
CONTACT
Andrew Cleland (University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 805 893 5401; E-mail: [email protected]
Markus Aspelmeyer (University of Vienna, Austria) N&V Author
Tel: +43 1 4277 72530; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Biology: Pain’s evolutionary past (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08848
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 17 March at 1800 London time / 1400 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 18 March, but at a later date. ***
Flies, mosquitoes and humans perceive chemical irritants via a common molecular mechanism, a Nature paper reveals. The results, which shed light on the evolutionary origins of pain sensation, may aid the design of new insect repellents.
The ion channel protein TRPA1 helps insect taste neurons detect noxious chemicals, Paul A. Garrity and colleagues show. TRPA1 is already known to have a role in human pain response to such irritants, suggesting that this particular molecular mechanism is not specific to vertebrates. Contrary to other chemical senses such as olfaction or taste, it seems that human detection of irritants relies on an ancient chemical sensor conserved in molecular detail across 500 million years of animal evolution.
CONTACT
Paul Garrity (Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 781 736 3127; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Space science: A not-so-hot Jupiter (pp 384-387)
Scientists have discovered an exoplanet with quite stable, moderate surface temperatures. The planet, called CoRoT-9b, is not totally different from planets within our own Solar System — it is about the size of Jupiter and has an orbit similar to Mercury’s.
There are about 400 known exoplanets, 70 of which orbit a central star. These planets, often referred to as ‘hot Jupiters’, either have very short or very eccentric orbits, creating extreme surface temperatures.
In Nature this week, Hans Deeg and colleagues report transit observations from the CoRoT space telescope of CoRoT-9b, a planet that orbits with a period of 95 days on a low eccentricity around a Sun-like star. They estimate the surface temperature to be between 250 and 430 kelvin, equivalent to somewhere between about –20 and 160 degrees Celsius. The planet is compatible with standard evolution models and is likely to have an interior composition similar to that of Jupiter or Saturn. The researchers suggest that, unlike previously discovered transiting planets, CoRoT-9b should not have been affected by tidal heating processes.
CONTACT
Hans Deeg (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Tenerife, Spain)
Tel: +34 922 605244; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Cancer: ‘Pro-ageing’ therapy for cancer? (pp 374-379; N&V)
The discovery of a signalling pathway that forces cancerous cells to age could aid the development of a general approach for cancer therapy, a Nature study suggests.
Cancer cells are able to divide indefinitely without ageing. Pier Paolo Pandolfi and colleagues have identified a new pathway that drives cell senescence but only in oncogenic conditions. Loss of the gene Skp2, a key component of the pathway, profoundly restricts tumour formation in some mouse cancer models by causing cancer cells to age — in other words, it puts a stop to cell division. Furthermore, a Skp2-blocking drug is shown to induce ageing in a tissue culture cancer model.
This cancer-related ageing pathway seems not to involve most known mediators of senescence, and the fact that its effects become apparent only in cancer cells suggests that pharmacological blockade of Skp2 could prove a useful, universal approach for preventing and treating cancer.
CONTACT
Pier Paolo Pandolfi (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 735 2121; E-mail: [email protected]
Manuel Serrano (Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, Madrid, Spain) N&V Author
Tel: +34 917 328 000; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Astronomy: Dust-free quasars in the early Universe (pp 380-383; N&V)
Scientists have discovered a distant, dust-free quasar in the earliest stages of its evolution. The quasar is only the second of its kind to be detected.
Quasars are powered by large, hot accretion disks surrounding the supermassive black holes found at the centres of galaxies. The most distant quasars generally have properties indistinguishable from those closer to us, suggesting that they were already evolved even when the Universe was in its infancy. Recently, however, a distant quasar was shown not to have any detectable emission from hot dust, suggesting a more primitive environment where dust had not yet had a chance to form.
In Nature this week, Linhua Jiang and colleagues analyse infrared images of 21 distant quasars. They demonstrate that the hot dust found in this sample of quasars builds up at the same time as their black holes grow, whereas at low redshift – that is, for closer, younger quasars – the dust mass is almost independent of the black hole mass. The observations indicate that quasars found without dust are likely to be first-generation, with dust being produced for the first time in these environments.
CONTACT
Linhua Jiang (University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA)
Tel: +1 520 621 9121; E-mail: [email protected]
Giulia Stratta (ASI Science Data Center, Frascati, Italy) N&V Author
Tel: +39 06 94188892; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] Genomics: You can’t teach an old dog new SNPs (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08837
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 17 March at 1800 London time / 1400 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 18 March, but at a later date. ***
A genome-wide survey of tens of thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in dogs and grey wolves sheds light on the process of dog diversification. The research, published online in Nature this week, shows striking patterns of genetic subdivision in dogs, defined by two divergent clusters, one of ancient breeds that have a history in antiquity and the other of modern breeds created in the Victorian era.
Robert Wayne and colleagues conducted an extensive study to genotype 48,036 SNPs from the nuclear genome of 912 dogs from 85 breeds, and 225 grey wolves from populations that may be closely related to the direct ancestors of the domestic dog. Their results reveal that much of genome diversity came from Middle Eastern ancestors, combined with interbreeding with local wolf populations, and that recent evolution involved limited genetic variation to create phenotypic diversity of modern dogs.
CONTACT
Robert Wayne (University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 310 206 0334; E-mail: [email protected]
[8] Genomics: Choosy plant pathogens (pp 367-373)
A comparative study of plant pathogen fungi is published in Nature this week. Martijn Rep and colleagues also show that transfer of just two whole chromosomes from a Fusarium oxysporum tomato pathogen turns its non-pathogenic relative into a pathogen.
Fungi of the genus Fusarium are important plant pathogens, causing various blights, root rots or wilts. While some species have a wide host range, others are more selective. Comparative genomics of three Fusarium fungi with broad and narrow host range, two newly sequenced in this paper, provide clues as to what drives these differences. The paper sheds light on how they have evolved to suit their various host plants, as well as the ability to produce an infectious disease in another organism.
CONTACT
Martijn Rep (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Tel: +31 205 257 764; E-mail: [email protected]
Kim Hammond-Kosack (Rothamsted Research, Harpenden, UK) Co-author
Tel: +44 1582 763133; E-mail: [email protected]
[9] Materials science: ‘Smart dust’ brings new shine to spectroscopy (pp 392-395; N&V)
A technique for analysing molecules on surfaces has become much more useful, thanks to a sprinkling of specially designed nanoparticles. The advance, reported in this week’s Nature, will allow surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy to be applied to a host of real-world problems, ranging from food security to environmental pollution.
Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy is a highly sensitive diagnostic technique, which can detect substances down to the single-molecule level. Unfortunately, its scope has been limited by the need to place the molecules of interest on a nanostructured metal substrate, which amplifies the Raman signal to detectable levels. A recent variation on the technique uses a gold probe tip as a signal amplifier, removing the requirement for a special substrate, but this ‘tip-enhanced’ method does not yield a very strong signal.
Now Zhong Qun Tian and colleagues have combined the versatility of the tip method with the sensitivity of the substrate method, in a new technique they call SHINERS (shell-insulated nanoparticle-enhanced Raman spectroscopy). Gold nanoparticles, each coated with an ultrathin, chemically inert shell of silica or alumina, are sprinkled on the surface of interest, providing signal amplification without interfering with the molecules adsorbed on the surface. The authors demonstrate the technique on samples ranging from hydrogen-coated platinum to pesticide-contaminated orange peel — showing that the new method is ripe for practical applications.
CONTACT
Zhong Qun Tian (Xiamen University, China)
Tel: +86 592 2186979; E-mail: [email protected]
Martin Moskovits (University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA) N&V Author
Tel: +1 805 893 5084; E-mail: [email protected]
[10] Physics: A quantum hybrid (pp 388-391)
Two experimental systems at the forefront of modern physics research — a single trapped ion and a quantum atomic gas — have been combined for the first time. The successful creation of this hybrid system opens the way to new types of experiment, in which the precise controllability of trapped ions can be used to study and manipulate quantum gases with nanometre precision.
In recent years, the ultracold quantum gases known as Bose–Einstein condensates and single ions confined in electromagnetic traps have both been used to explore a wide range of problems in fundamental physics. In this week’s Nature, Michael Köhl and colleagues describe the immersion of a single trapped ytterbium ion in a Bose–Einstein condensate of neutral rubidium atoms.
The authors show that they can control the two systems independently, and study their interactions. They also observe ‘sympathetic cooling’ of the ion by the condensate — an effect that might ultimately prove useful in quantum computing.
CONTACT
Michael Köhl (University of Cambridge, UK)
Tel: +44 1223 337479; E-mail: [email protected]
[11] And finally… Male seahorses have the last word (pp 401-404; N&V)
The male brood pouch, common in seahorses and their relatives, may have an active role in offspring selection and post-copulatory abortion, according to research in Nature this week.
Male pregnancy, a phenomenon unique to seahorses, pipefishes and sea dragons, sees the female depositing her eggs into the male’s brood pouch during mating, and the male protecting and nurturing the developing offspring during a pregnancy of several weeks. Now, Kimberly Paczolt and Adam Jones show how male Gulf pipefishes can selectively abort embryos from females perceived as less attractive, saving resources for future reproductive opportunities.
This research shows that, despite the fact that this species exhibits mate choice before mating, the male pipefish has the final say on the future of the offspring. This is the only known example of post-copulatory sexual conflict in a sex-reversed species.
CONTACT
Kimberley Paczolt (Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA)
Tel: +1 979 204 1525; E-mail: [email protected]
Anders Berglund (Uppsala University, Sweden) N&V Author
Tel: +46 18 471 2643; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[12] Isotope fractionation in silicate melts by thermal diffusion (pp 396-400)
[13] Structural basis for receptor recognition of vitamin-B12–intrinsic factor complexes (pp 445-448)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 17 March at 1800 London time / 1400 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 18 March, but at a later date. ***
[14] Genetic analysis of variation in transcription factor binding in yeast
DOI: 10.1038/nature08934
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
Brisbane: 8
Sydney: 1, 4, 7
AUSTRIA
Graz: 4
Vienna: 4
BELGIUM
Liège: 4
BRAZIL
São Paulo: 4
CANADA
Calgary: 7
Saskatoon: 12
CHILE
Santiago: 4
CHINA
Kunming: 7
Shanghai: 7
Xiamen: 9
DENMARK
Aarhus: 13
Copenhagen: 6
Roshilde: 1
FRANCE
Aix-en-Provence: 8
Marseille: 4
Meudon: 4
Nice: 4
Orsay: 4
Paris: 4, 8
St. Michel l’Observatoire: 4
Sophia-Antipolis: 8
GERMANY
Berlin: 4
Cologne: 4
Garching: 6
Heidelberg: 6, 14
Tautenburg: 4
INDONESIA
Bandung: 1
ISRAEL
Tel Aviv: 4, 7
ITALY
Ozzano Emilia: 7
Padua: 4
JAPAN
Fukuoka: 5
KOREA
Seoul: 8
NETHERLANDS
Amsterdam: 8
Leiden: 1
Noordwijk: 4
POLAND
Bialowieza: 7
Warsaw: 7
SPAIN
Tenerife: 4
SWITZERLAND
Bern: 4
Sauverny: 4
Zurich: 12
UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge: 3, 8, 10
Exeter: 4
Harpenden: 8
Oxford: 4
Waltham on the Worlds: 7
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Arizona
Tucson: 6, 8
California
Davis: 7, 12
Los Angeles: 7, 8
Pasadena: 4
Ramona: 8
Riverside: 8
Santa Barbara: 2, 4
Santa Clara: 7
Santa Cruz: 7
Stanford: 14
Colorado
Boulder: 6
Connecticut
Branford: 8
New Haven: 14
Georgia
Atlanta: 9
Illinois
Peoria: 8
Urbana: 12
Indiana
West Lafayette: 8
Maryland
Bethesda: 7
Massachusetts
Boston: 5
Cambridge: 6, 8
Waltham: 3
Minnesota
St. Paul: 8
New Jersey
Princeton: 6
New Mexico
Socorro: 6
New York
Ithaca: 7, 8
New York: 5
Oregon
Corvallis: 8
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia: 6
University Park: 6, 8
Tennessee
Nashville: 5
Texas
College Station: 8, 11
Dallas: 8
Houston: 5
Washington
Richland: 8
Wisconsin
Madison: 8
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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