NATURE AND THE NATURE RESEARCH JOURNALS PRESS RELEASE
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers
Genetics: Seeing double
Planetary science: An asteroid covered in frost
Climate science: Who’s for ice?
Chemistry: A new catalyst for making hydrogen from water
Opinion: Disappearing trees must be tracked
Immunology: A close look at type 1 diabetes
Genetics: Mutation implicated in ALS
Neuroscience: From many to one
And finally… Fair-weather feathers
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Genetics: Seeing double (pp 1351-1356)
A detailed genome-wide analysis of twins with multiple sclerosis is reported in Nature this week, exploring the relative roles of genes versus environment in the disease. The work describes the first use of multi-level genome-wide analysis to study twins with autoimmune disease.
Monozygotic or ‘identical’ twins have been widely studied to explore to what extent genes or the environment have a role in human diseases. Stephen Kingsmore and colleagues studied three pairs of monozygotic twins, where one twin had multiple sclerosis and the other didn’t. The team studied SNPs in all of the pairs and then went on to sequence the full genome for one pair of twins. Transcriptomes and epigenome sequences from an immune cell type relevant to the pathology of MS were also determined for all twin pairs. Strikingly, the authors did not find any evidence for genetic, epigenetic or transcriptome differences that explained disease discordance.
The molecular basis of multiple sclerosis is currently poorly understood and some possible causes can be ruled out thanks to this study. Among the many future avenues to explore the authors single out systematic studies of other cell types as well as various other epigenetic modifications.
Author contact
Stephen Kingsmore (National Center for Genome Resources, Santa Fe, NM, USA)
Tel: +1 505 670 3083
E-mail: [email protected]
[2] & [3] Planetary science: An asteroid covered in frost (pp 1320-1323; N&V)
Water-ice has been detected for the first time on the surface of an asteroid, accompanied by organic compounds. The discovery, reported independently by two teams of planetary scientists in this week’s Nature, bears on the origin of the Earth’s oceans, and may point to a source region for organic molecules found in primitive meteorites.
24 Themis, one of the largest main-belt asteroids, has attracted attention from astronomers because several smaller members of its dynamical family have been identified as ‘main-belt comets’, with dust tails presumably driven by the sublimation of water-ice. Although hydrated minerals have been identified on asteroid surfaces, and outer main-belt asteroids have been suggested as the source of water on the Earth, until now there has been no direct detection of asteroidal water.
The detections now reported were made spectroscopically, using an infrared telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea. Andrew Rivkin and Joshua Emery noted an absorption feature in the spectrum of light reflected from the asteroid, which can be explained by an extremely thin layer of frost, mixed with carbonaceous material, coating the asteroid’s surface minerals. Humberto Campins and colleagues came to the same conclusion; moreover, from the spectrum’s constant appearance as the asteroid rotates, they deduce that ice and organic material are spread widely across the asteroid’s surface.
In a News and Views article accompanying the two papers, Henry Hsieh likens the discovery of asteroidal water-ice to that of a ‘living fossil’ — a remnant of the early Solar System that was generally considered to have disappeared long ago.
Author contact
Andrew Rivkin (Johns Hopkins University, Laurel, MD, USA) – Author paper [2]
Tel: +1 443 778 2811
E-mail: [email protected]
Humberto Campins (University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA) – Author paper [3]
Tel: +1 407 823 0251
E-mail: [email protected]
Henry Hsieh (Queen’s University Belfast, UK)
N&V author
Tel: +44 28 9097 3692
E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Climate science: Who’s for ice? (pp 1334-1337)
In this week’s Nature, James Screen and Ian Simmonds use a state-of-the-art atmospheric data set to reassess the underlying factors influencing Arctic warming from 1989 to 2008. Their research suggests that the warming correlates primarily with reductions in sea ice cover over the same period.
The effects of climate change have been especially pronounced in the Arctic in recent decades; the rise in air temperature in this part of the world, for instance, is twice the global average. Various factors have been put forward to explain this ‘polar amplification’, including changes in atmospheric and ocean circulation. But so far, proposals have been contested.
The ice–temperature feedback confirmed in the study suggests that sea ice declines and temperature increases will continue in the future, with important implications for Arctic ecosystems.
Author contact
James Screen (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Tel: +61 3 8344 6540
E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Chemistry: A new catalyst for making hydrogen from water (pp 1329-1333)
A molecular complex with a molybdenum–oxygen bond at its heart can catalyse the production of hydrogen from pure water or sea water. The discovery, reported in this week’s Nature, establishes a new class of chemical compounds that could contribute to sustainable energy cycles.
As part of the search for carbon-neutral sources of renewable energy, chemists are seeking efficient and inexpensive catalysts that can produce large quantities of hydrogen gas from water. Existing candidates for this role have drawbacks, such as poor stability or high cost, that make it worthwhile to look for alternatives.
The new catalyst identified by Jeffrey Long and colleagues has a number of features that will attract interest. It can operate in pure (neutral) water or sea water, without the need for added acids or organic co-solvents; and its catalytic activity is higher than that of other known molecular catalysts in neutral water. Moreover, the discovery that a metal–oxygen complex can act as a reduction catalyst will spur exploration among similar chemical motifs to find even better catalysts.
Author contact
Jeffrey Long (University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 510 642 0860
E-mail: [email protected]
Opinion: Disappearing trees must be tracked (p 1271)
Studies are needed to see how trees will respond to the environmental stress of warmer, drier conditions as climate change warms the world, argues an Opinion article in Nature this week. So far, scientists have focused mainly on the expanding edges of these zones — in part because the forestry sector is more interested in studying where trees grow well, rather than where they do not.
The areas where trees can survive are shifting closer to the poles or up the slopes of mountains, and the retreating low latitude and low elevation limits of forests have been neglected by research, argues Csaba Mátyás. For now that might not be a problem, because dying trees make room for more animal pastures, or provide extra salvageable timber. But over time such losses will have more dramatic social and economic consequences. If researchers are to be able to conserve the genetic resources of forests, they must devote more attention to subpopulations: the trees that live close to current limits of temperature and aridity have valuable genetic adaptations that help them to survive.
Author contact
Csaba Mátyás (University of West Hungary, Sopron, Hungary)
Tel: +36 99 518 395
E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Immunology: A close look at type 1 diabetes (pp 1293-1300)
The incidence of type 1 diabetes has increased dramatically over the last two decades, and a review in this week’s Nature discusses the factors fuelling this unwelcome increase, as well as current and future clinical options for those affected by this pernicious disease.
Jeffrey A. Bluestone and colleagues describe our current understanding of the genetic, cellular and molecular mechanisms thought to underpin this autoimmune destruction of insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells. Advances in these areas have led to the discovery of many potential therapeutic targets, and there are over a dozen new therapies now being tested in patients. The next decade is, they say, likely to bring new insights into the links between genetics and disease, new sources of islets to replace destroyed beta cells and new combination therapies.
Author contact
Jeffrey Bluestone (University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 415 514 1683
E-mail: [email protected]
[7] Genetics: Mutation implicated in ALS (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature08971
This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 28 April 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 29 April, but at a later date.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) may sometimes be caused by a mutation in the gene encoding optineurin, a Nature paper suggests. The finding has implications for treatment design.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a form of motor neuron disease. Only 10% of cases are familial, but the small number of mutations identified in these families only accounts for around 20–30% of these cases.
Three different optineurin mutations have been identified in ALS patients, indicating that the gene, previously implicated in a rare form of familial glaucoma, may be involved in ALS pathogenesis. Hideshi Kawakami and colleagues also found that two of these mutations interfere with levels of a protein complex called NF-kappa B, suggesting that NF-kappa B-blocking drugs may prove useful therapeutically.
Author contact
Hideshi Kawakami (Hiroshima University, Japan)
Tel: +81 82 257 5846
E-mail: [email protected]
[8] Neuroscience: > From many to one (pp 1307-1312; N&V)
Individual nerve cells make their own decision about the sensory world, new research reveals in Nature this week. The results and the new technique introduced have wide-ranging implications for future brain mapping studies.
Many sensory neurons in the mammalian cortex fire in response to very specific stimuli. For example, some neurons fire when the animal's eyes are presented with horizontal bars that move vertically from top to bottom on a screen, whereas others respond only if the bars move across the screen in other directions.
It’s been unclear whether such neuron ‘tuning’ is encoded in the wiring of incoming nerve connections or whether the neuron itself computes its own selective output. By mapping sensory inputs to mouse cortical neurons down to single-synapse resolution while animals were presented with moving bars on a screen, Arthur Konnerth and his team show that each neuron receives input signals coding for most stimulus orientations and randomly distributed across their dendrites. They conclude that the orientation preference of a neuron’s firing output is computed within the cell — and not in a biased input wiring.
Author contact
Arthur Konnerth (Technical University Munich, Germany)
Tel: +49 89 4140 3350
E-mail: [email protected]
David Ferster (Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA)
N&V author
Tel: +1 847 491 4137
E-mail: [email protected]
[9] And finally… Fair-weather feathers (pp 1338-1341)
The finding of two feathered dinosaur fossils from the Early Cretaceous of China indicates that dinosaur feathers changed dramatically as the animals matured. The recent discoveries, comprising two specimens preserved at different stages of development, are reported in this week’s Nature.
The two fossils represent an early and a late juvenile of the theropod species Similicaudipteryx and have strikingly different feathers. Whereas the wing and tail feathers of the younger animal are ribbon-like, in the elder specimen they are quill-like. The wing feathers are also smaller than the tail feathers in the younger specimen but the size difference is less significant in the elder creature.
The finding, reported by Xing Xu and colleagues, suggests that early feathers were much more developmentally diverse than those of modern birds and that some feather features have been lost over the course of evolution.
Author Contact
Xing Xu (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China)
Tel: +86 10 8836 9196
E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[10] Dicke quantum phase transition with a superfluid gas in an optical cavity (pp 1301-1306; N&V)
[11] NLRP3 inflammasomes are required for atherogenesis and activated by cholesterol crystals (pp 1357-1361)
[12] Dipolar collisions of polar molecules in the quantum regime (pp 1324-1328)
[13] A role for host–parasite interactions in the horizontal transfer of transposons across phyla (pp 1347-1350)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 28 April 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 29 April, but at a later date.
[14] G domain dimerization controls dynamin’s assembly-stimulated GTPase activity
DOI: 10.1038/nature9032
[15] Structural basis of oligomerization in the stalk region of dynamin-like MxA
DOI: 10.1038/nature8972
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
Melbourne: 4
Parkville: 11
BRAZIL
Rio de Janeiro: 3
CHINA
Beijing: 9
Shangdong: 9
FRANCE
Palaiseau: 10
GERMANY
Berlin: 15
Bonn: 11
Freiburg: 15
Garching: 12
Munich: 8, 11
JAPAN
Fukuyama: 7
Hiroshima: 7
Kyoto: 7
Moriguchi: 7
Ohtsu: 7
Okayama: 7
Osakasayama: 7
Saitama: 7
Sendai: 7
Tokushima: 7
Tokyo: 7
Yamagata: 7
NORWAY
Trondheim: 11
PUERTO RICO
Arecibo: 3
SPAIN
La Laguna: 3
SWITZERLAND
Zurich: 10
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Berkeley: 5
Hayward: 1
La Jolla: 14
Moffett Field: 3
San Francisco: 1, 6
South San Francisco: 1
Colorado
Aurora: 6
Boulder: 12
Connecticut
New Haven: 6
District of Columbia
Washington: 13
Florida
Orlando: 3
Maine
Portland: 3
Maryland
Bethesda: 14
College Park: 3
Laurel: 2
Massachusetts
Boston: 11
Worcester: 11
Michigan
Ann Arbor: 11
Detroit: 1
East Lansing: 11
New Mexico
Santa Fe: 1
New York
New York: 7, 11
Tennessee
Knoxville: 2
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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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