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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.468 NO.7324 DATED 02 DECEMBER 2010
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Astronomy: An abundance of low-mass stars in old galaxies
Genetics: LMO1’s dual role in neuroblastoma
Comment: When small got big
Neuroscience: Simple sex-specific circuits
Ecology: Biodiversity and infectious disease
Physics: ‘Stripes’ and the pseudogap in a high-temperature superconductor
And finally… Atmosphere of a ‘super-Earth’ exoplanet
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Astronomy: An abundance of low-mass stars in old galaxies (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature09578
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 01 December 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 02 December, but at a later date. ***
Measurements of the light from several elliptical galaxies have revealed that low-mass stars are much more abundant in these ‘early-type’ galaxies than has been thought. This finding, published in this week’s Nature, implies that the mass distribution of stars in forming galaxies depends on the prevailing physical conditions, with implications for interpreting observations of galaxies in the early Universe.
The mass distribution of stars at the time of their formation — known as the stellar initial mass function — is reasonably well known for the disk of our Galaxy (the Milky Way), but is poorly constrained for other galaxies and for earlier cosmic epochs. In particular, there has been much speculation regarding the abundance of low-mass stars, which are too faint to detect individually in external galaxies.
Pieter van Dokkum and Charlie Conroy now report sensitive spectroscopic observations of eight nearby elliptical galaxies, which allow them to detect the aggregate light emitted by low-mass stars. They conclude that, in the progenitors of massive elliptical galaxies, which formed early in the Universe’s history, the initial mass function was much more ‘dwarf-rich’ than that in the quieter environment of the Milky Way disk. This will need to be taken into account in estimating the stellar masses and star-formation rates of distant galaxies.
CONTACT
Pieter van Dokkum (Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA)
Tel: +1 203 432 3019; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Genetics: LMO1’s dual role in neuroblastoma (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature09609
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 01 December 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 02 December, but at a later date. ***
Mutations at the LMO1 locus are strongly associated with susceptibility to developing neuroblastoma and may also influence the chance of further alterations that can lead to malignant progression. The findings are reported this week in Nature.
Neuroblastoma is a childhood cancer of the sympathetic nervous system that accounts for 10% of paediatric cancer deaths. The LMO1 gene is mainly expressed in the nervous system and, along with other members of this gene family, is strongly implicated in the aetiology of human cancer.
John Maris and colleagues use an integrative genomics approach to show that common genetic mutations associated with predisposition to neuroblastoma may also mark regions of the genome prone to somatic alterations, which influence tumour progression. The authors suggest that in childhood cancers, such as neuroblastoma, the real power of genome-wide association studies may be in identifying therapeutic targets and biomarkers of aggressiveness.
CONTACT
John Maris (The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, PA, USA)
Tel: +1 215 590 5242; E-mail: [email protected]
Comment: When small got big (pp 627-628)
Nanotechnology has had ten years of spend, spend, spend. Where did all the money go? A decade ago the US kicked off a funding boom when it launched its National Nanotechnology Initiative. Today, more than 60 countries have national nanotechnology programmes. Worldwide, public spending on nanotech R&D exceeded US$8 billion in 2008.
In a Comment piece in Nature, researchers Philip Shapira and Jue Wang use data-mining techniques to assemble a database of nanotechnology publications that allows them to make comparisons across countries. They have analysed funding acknowledgements reported by authors to link research output with its funding source for the leading international sponsors of nanotechnology. The four countries with the largest share of nanotechnology publications are the United States (23%), China (22%), Germany (8%) and Japan (8%).
Yet despite the early focus on national initiatives, Shapira and Wang find that patterns of funding and publications often cross borders. Their work identifies regional clusters where such cross-funding is most productive. They also show that where national funds are most heavily concentrated – say, in fewer institutions – the research is generally of lower quality. China is a good example where output is high in terms of numbers of papers but quality still lags behind the United States and Europe.
With flat R&D budgets worldwide and new technologies emerging, nanotechnology cannot expect funders to be as generous over the next decade. Shapira and Wang suggest one way that national agencies can improve their outcomes: foster more international partnerships between domestic researchers and their colleagues overseas.
CONTACT
Philip Shapira (University of Manchester, UK, and Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA)
Tel: +1 404 894 7735; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Neuroscience: Simple sex-specific circuits (pp 686-690; N&V)
Researchers have mapped differences in neuronal circuitry that help to uncover how male and female fruitflies respond to a given pheromone with distinct behaviours. The techniques developed by the team, reported in this week’s Nature, should aid neuronal circuit mapping, which remains daunting even for the relatively simple fly brain.
Drosophila show innate olfactory-driven behaviours, which are stereotyped and independent of any learning or experience. This suggests that the neural circuits that mediate these behaviours are genetically programmed. Focusing on sex-specific responses to the cVA pheromone, Richard Axel and colleagues combine several imaging techniques to describe a chain of four successive neurons from olfactory signals to motor centres. All anatomical differences between male and female occur downstream of a conserved sensory cell. This neural pathway suggests a means by which the same sensory input can elicit different behaviours in the two sexes.
CONTACT
Richard Axel (Columbia University, New York, NY, USA)
Tel: +1 212 205 6915; E-mail: [email protected]
Richard Benton (University of Lausanne, Switzerland) N&V author
Tel: +41 21 692 3932; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Ecology: Biodiversity and infectious disease (pp 647-652)
Preserving biodiversity may have a hitherto under-appreciated benefit—reducing the prevalence of infectious diseases, indicates a Review in this week’s Nature that has implications for science and policy.
Recent research has suggested that biological diversity in ecological communities—whether in agricultural fields, coral reefs, barns, or the insides of human bodies, can affect transmission of infectious diseases. But although high biodiversity may provide a larger pool of pathogens, biodiversity loss frequently increases disease transmission.
Felicia Keesing and colleagues delve deep into these links in an attempt to identify how understanding the ecology of infectious diseases in nature might help predict, prevent and mitigate the spread of infectious diseases.
CONTACT
Felicia Keesing (Bard College, Annandale, NY, USA)
Tel: +1 845 752 2331; E-mail: [email protected]
Richard Ostfeld (Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, NY, USA) Co-author
Tel: +1 845 677 7600 ext. 136; E-mail: [email protected]
Andrew Dobson (Princeton University, NJ, USA) Co-author
Tel: +1 609 258 2913; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Physics: ‘Stripes’ and the pseudogap in a high-temperature superconductor (pp 677-680; N&V)
A link between two phenomena associated with high-transition-temperature (high-Tc) superconductivity is reported in this week’s Nature. Spectroscopic mapping of the electronic states in the high-Tc superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x shows that the onset of the ‘pseudogap’ phase, which is a precursor to superconductivity, coincides with the appearance of electronic patterns that have the characteristics expected of fluctuating ‘stripes’ of ordered charge and spin.
In the search for the mechanism of high-Tc superconductivity, one line of enquiry has centred on the pseudogap phase, which forms when positive charge carriers (‘holes’) are added to the insulating parent compound, but in insufficient quantity to form the superconducting phase. This ‘hole-doping’ is also thought to lead to the formation of fluctuating stripe patterns of charge and spin, which may play a role in the onset of superconductivity. But these fluctuating stripes have been difficult to pin down, and their static counterparts are also not commonly observed. Scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) is an excellent tool for examining electronic order, but considerable debate has surrounded STM observations that some have interpreted as evidence for stripes.
Ali Yazdani and colleagues report STM observations over a wide range of temperature and hole concentration that provide strong evidence for fluctuating stripe order in Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+x, emerging with the onset of the pseudogap state, and persisting over a large part of the phase diagram. The new data also indicate that stripes are a consequence of the pseudogap, rather than its cause.
CONTACT
Ali Yazdani (Princeton University, NJ, USA)
Tel: +1 609 258 4390; E-mail: [email protected]
Kathryn Moler (Stanford University, CA, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 650 723 6804; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] And finally… Atmosphere of a ‘super-Earth’ exoplanet (pp 669-672; N&V)
The first direct measurements of the atmosphere of an extrasolar ‘super-Earth’ are reported in this week’s Nature. The results suggest that if the planet’s atmosphere is dominated by hydrogen, it must contain high-altitude clouds or hazes; alternatively, the planet may have a dense, steam atmosphere.
Exoplanets with masses between 2 and 10 times that of the Earth, known as ‘super-Earths’, occupy an intermediate mass regime between the terrestrial planets and gas or ice giants of our Solar System. The recent discovery of the super-Earth GJ 1214b, which crosses in front of (‘transits’) its host star, provided an opportunity to measure both the mass and radius of such a planet. These indicate a bulk density that is too low to be explained by rock and water-ice alone — implying the presence of a significant atmosphere. Measuring the atmospheric composition would constrain the bulk composition of the planet, and shed light on its possible kinship with either terrestrial or small gas-giant planets.
Jacob Bean and colleagues now report a ground-based measurement of the transmission spectrum of GJ 1214b at red to near-infrared wavelengths, as it transits its star. The lack of absorption features in the spectrum rules out a cloud-free atmosphere composed primarily of hydrogen. Distinguishing between a cloudy, hydrogen-dominated atmosphere and one rich in water vapour should be possible with planned observations at longer wavelengths, using space-based telescopes.
CONTACT
Jacob Bean (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 495 7743; E-mail: [email protected]
Drake Deming (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 301 286 6519; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[7] Lkb1 regulates cell cycle and energy metabolism in haematopoietic stem cells (pp 653-658; N&V)
[8] The Lkb1 metabolic sensor maintains haematopoietic stem cell survival (pp 659-663)
[9] The redox state of arc mantle using Zn/Fe systematics (pp 681-685)
[10] Lkb1 regulates quiescence and metabolic homeostasis of haematopoietic stem cells (pp 701-704)
[11] Structural changes of envelope proteins during alphavirus fusion (pp 705-708)
[12] Glycoprotein organization of Chikungunya virus particles revealed by X-ray crystallography (pp 709-712; N&V)
[13] Head swivel on the ribosome facilitates translocation by means of intra-subunit tRNA hybrid sites (pp 713-716)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 01 December 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 02 December, but at a later date. ***
[14] Crystal structure of bacterial RNA polymerase bound with a transcription inhibitor protein
DOI: 10.1038/nature09573
[15] A role for mitochondria in NLRP3 inflammasome activation
DOI: 10.1038/nature09663
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.
FRANCE
Gif sur Yvette: 12
Lyon: 9
Orsay: 12
Paris: 12
GERMANY
Berlin: 13
Frankfurt am Main: 13
Göttingen: 6
Marburg: 13
Munich: 13
ITALY
Naples: 2
Rome: 2
JAPAN
Sayo: 14
Tokyo: 2, 5, 14
Yokohama: 14
PORTUGAL
Oeiras: 3
SWITZERLAND
Epalinges: 15
UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge: 12
London: 4
Sutton: 2
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
La Jolla: 13
Los Angeles: 2
Santa Cruz: 6
Connecticut
New Haven: 1
Florida
Gainesville: 2, 4
Tallahassee: 13
Indiana
West Lafayette: 11
Massachusetts
Boston: 2, 3, 8, 10
Cambridge: 1, 4, 6, 8
Michigan
Ann Arbor: 7
New Jersey
Princeton: 1, 4, 5
New Mexico
Los Alamos: 13
New York
Annandale: 4
Ithaca: 4
Millbrook: 4
New York: 3, 4
Upton: 5
North Carolina
Chapel Hill: 4
Oregon
Corvallis: 4
Pennsylvania
College Station: 4
Philadelphia: 2
Texas
Houston: 9, 13
Virginia
Arlington: 9
Ashburn: 3
Blacksburg: 4
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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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