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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.473 NO.7347 DATED 19 MAY 2011
This press release contains:
· Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Astronomy: Lonely planets
Cancer: Overcoming treatment-resistant leukaemia
Ecology: Overestimating extinction rates
Climate science: Currents from the deep
Biology: The evolution of proteins
Geophysics: Melting of the Earth’s inner core
And finally… When is a snake not a snake?
· Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
· Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Astronomy: Lonely planets (pp 349-352; N&V)
The discovery of a population of free-floating planets that have no nearby host stars is reported in Nature this week.
Hundreds of exoplanets have been detected in the past 15 years, most of which are gravitationally bound to their host stars. Distant planets that are far away from light-giving stars can be detected using gravitational microlensing, which allows the study of objects that emit little or no light. Using this technique, Takahiro Sumi and colleagues observed 10 objects with about a Jupiter mass that are at least 10 astronomical units from a star (one astronomical unit is the Sun–Earth distance). On the basis of an analysis of the frequency of occurrence of such bodies, Sumi concludes that there are nearly twice as many such planets as main-sequence stars.
The planetary-mass population identified here may have formed in protoplanetary disks — dense gas clouds around a newly formed star — and then been scattered into unbound or very distant orbits, the authors conclude.
CONTACT
Takahiro Sumi (Osaka University, Toyonaka, Japan)
Tel: +81 52 789 4329; E-mail: [email protected]
Joachim Wambsganss (University of Heidelberg, Germany) N&V author
Tel: +49 6221 405 122; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Cancer: Overcoming treatment-resistant leukaemia (pp 384-388)
A novel mechanism of drug resistance in leukaemia is published online this week in Nature. In light of these findings, a potential clinical approach has been devised that could overcome this resistance and improve therapeutic responses.
Markus Müschen and colleagues describe how treatment of leukaemia with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) activates a BCL6-dependent mechanism of drug resistance. BCL6 is a repressor required for the survival of mature B cells and T follicular helper (TH17) cells. Upregulation of BCL6 as a result of TKI treatment enables survival of leukaemic cells. These cells undergo rapid death in the absence of BCL6.
Müschen’s team demonstrate that targeted inhibition of BCL6 reduces the number of drug-resistant and self-renewing leukaemia-initiating cells. In xenograft models of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia cells carrying BCR–ABL1 mutations, dual inhibition of BCR–ABL1 and BCL6 prevents resistance and improves the therapeutic response.
CONTACT
Markus Müschen (University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 323 361 5592; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Ecology: Overestimating extinction rates (pp 368-371; N&V)
Methods for calculating expected extinction rates due to habitat loss might have substantially overestimated these rates, according to a paper published online in Nature this week. Although habitat loss is a serious contributing factor to species extinction, these results indicate that new methods are needed to predict extinction rates more accurately.
Current methods of calculating extinction rates all make the false assumption that one can calculate the species loss by simply reversing the curve describing how the number of species increases as more habitat area is sampled. In fact, the area that must be removed to cause extinction of a species is always larger than the sample area that must be added to encounter the species for the first time. This discrepancy exists because extinction requires all the individuals to be lost, whereas species accumulation only needs one individual of the species to be found. Fangliang He and Stephen Hubbell demonstrate that all extinction rates based on these calculations are overestimates, sometimes by up to 160%.
The authors caution that despite the overestimated extinction rates, habitat loss remains the main threat to biodiversity.
CONTACT
Fangliang He (Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China)
E-mail: [email protected]
Stephen P. Hubbell (University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 310 206 8165; E-mail: [email protected]
Carsten Rahbek (University of Copenhagen, Denmark) N&V author
E-mail: [email protected]; Tel: +45 3532 1030
Comment: Nuclear winter is a real and present danger
Research highlighting the risks of a ‘nuclear winter’ is shunned by policy magazines and politicians alike, says Alan Robock in a Comment in this week’s Nature. In the 1980s, such work helped to end the arms race between the United States and Soviet Union. It should now be used to help stamp out remaining nuclear arsenals, Robock. But, he says, he has had some “surreal” attention from Cuba's former president Fidel Castro, but no serious response from the United States.
Robock and his colleagues have calculated that a ‘small’ nuclear war between India and Pakistan, with each side using 50 Hiroshima-size bombs, would set cities alight and create five million tonnes of black carbon smoke. Initial global temperatures would be lower than during the ‘Little Ice Age’ (ad 1400–1850), during which famine killed millions. Growing seasons would be shortened by weeks in the midlatitudes for several years, and cooling would last a decade.
Many people think the nuclear-winter hypothesis was disproved in the late 1980s, largely thanks to a public row between scientists over the details of the theory and the emergence of the term ‘nuclear autumn’ instead of ‘winter’, says Robock. Others think that the theory only applies to a massive conflict between super powers, which no longer seems a threat. Neither is true. “These myths need to be debunked,” writes Robock.
CONTACT
Alan Robock (Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA)
Tel: +1 732 932 9800 x6222; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Climate science: Currents from the deep (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10013
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 18 May 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 19 May, but at a later date. ***
Variations of narrow currents in the deep ocean can affect sea surface temperature, wind and rainfall in the equatorial Atlantic Ocean, reports a paper in this week’s Nature. These findings could lead to possible improvements in forecasting the climate of the equatorial Atlantic Ocean.
Peter Brandt and colleagues show that cycles in the behaviour of deep zonal currents known as equatorial jets are propagated to the surface of the ocean. These jets can be found at depths as low as 2,000 metres and their propagation affects sea surface conditions. The intrinsic ocean dynamics of the deep Atlantic vary over a period of about 4.5 years and are linked to a 4.5-year climate cycle.
Oscillations in the jets are associated with variations in the sea surface temperature. Thus, expression of the deep jets up at the surface could be used to improve the prediction of equatorial Atlantic sea surface temperature, which is vital for regional seasonal to interannual climate forecasting.
CONTACT
Peter Brandt (Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences - IFM-GEOMAR, Kiel, Germany)
Tel: +49 431 600 4105; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Biology: The evolution of proteins (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature09992
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 18 May 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 19 May, but at a later date. ***
The evolution of proteins may not always be a result of adaptive mechanisms, reports a Nature paper this week. In small populations, the accumulation of small structural defects in proteins can occur. These defects lead to increased potential for protein–protein interactions, which in turn can evolve into meaningful biochemical pathways.
Small populations are prone to a non-adaptive evolutionary phenomenon called genetic drift, whereby mildly deleterious mutations accumulate. Michael Lynch and Ariel Fernandez show that genetic drift induces secondary selection for protein–protein interactions that stabilize key gene functions. The power of the genetic drift effect is enhanced in small populations owing to sampling bias that allows mutations to occur, which can eventually contribute to genome complexity.
Although complex protein architectures and interactions may be essential contributors to phenotypic complexity, such features may initially emerge by non-adaptive mechanisms. These findings indicate that the emergence of intracellular diversity cannot be interpreted as a simple outcome of natural selection for phenotypic complexity. However, the authors note that this hypothesis does not rule out the importance of natural selection in this process.
CONTACT
Michael Lynch (Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA)
Tel: +1 812 855 7384; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Geophysics: Melting of the Earth’s inner core (pp 361-363; N&V)
Computational simulations of convection in the Earth’s outer core published in Nature this week may help to understand the dynamics and complex structure of the inner core.
A self-sustaining dynamo in the liquid iron core is responsible for the generation of the Earth’s magnetic field. The core responds to variations in heat flow to and from the overlying mantle, convecting in response to cooling of the mantle. Binod Sreenivasan and colleagues present geodynamo simulations showing that variations in heat flow at the core–mantle boundary can be transferred to the inner core boundary. They find that the variations can be large enough to cause heat to flow regionally into the inner core; if this were to occur in the Earth, it would cause localized melting.
This model may provide an explanation for observed seismic anomalies immediately above the inner core boundary. Moreover, localized melting and freezing might also be the cause of seismic anomalies observed within the inner core.
CONTACT
Binod Sreenivasan (Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India)
Tel: +91 512 259 6679; E-mail: [email protected]
Bruce Buffett (University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 510 642 1251; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] And finally… When is a snake not a snake? (pp 364-367)
The discovery of a fossil limbed lizard from the Eocene of Germany could help to solve the puzzle of the origins of the amphisbaenians (‘worm lizards’), a curious group of legless lizards.
Amphisbaenians are a clade of lizards characterized by a snake-like body and a strongly reinforced skull, adapted for head-first burrowing. The evolutionary origins of this group are, however, controversial. Molecular phylogenetics indicates that they are related to lacertids (ground-living lizards with short bodies and four legs), whereas morphological evidence supports a grouping with snakes and other limbless reptiles.
Reporting in Nature this week, Johannes Müller and colleagues describe the well-preserved fossilized remains of a previously unknown lizard species from the Messel Pit in Germany. The animal appears to combine features of lacertids and amphisbaenians, which supports the hypothesis that these two groups are descended from a single common ancestor. The findings also suggest that body elongation and limblessness evolved independently in amphisbaenians and snakes.
CONTACT
Johannes Müller (Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, Germany)
Tel: +49 30 2093 8805; E-mail: [email protected]
Robert Reisz (University of Toronto, Mississauga, Canada) Co-author
Tel: +1 905 828 5364; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[8] Global quantification of mammalian gene expression control (pp 337-342)
[9] A novel protein family mediates Casparian strip formation in the endodermis (pp 380-383; N&V)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 18 May 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 19 May, but at a later date. ***
[10] Agonist-bound adenosine A2A receptor structures reveal common features of GPCR activation
DOI: 10.1038/nature10136
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.
BELGIUM
Ghent: 9
CANADA
Alberta: 3
Ontario: 7
CHILE
Concepción: 1
CHINA
Guangzhou: 3
GERMANY
Berlin: 7, 8
Frieberg: 2
Hamburg: 2
Kiel: 4
Mainz: 7
Manheim: 2
Tübingen: 9
INDIA
Kanpur: 6
JAPAN
Kobe: 1
Nagoya: 1
Osaka: 1
Tokyo: 1
NETHERLANDS
Wageningen: 9
NEW ZEALAND
Auckland: 1
Christchurch: 1
Lake Tekapo: 1
Wellington: 1
PANAMA
Panama City: 3
POLAND
Warszawa: 1
SWITZERLAND
Lausanne: 9
UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge: 1, 10
Leeds: 6
Welwyn Garden City: 10
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
La Jolla: 6
Los Angeles: 2, 3
San Francisco: 2
Santa Cruz: 7
Florida
Miami: 4
Illinois
Chicago: 5
Indiana
Bloomington: 5
Notre Dame: 1
Massachusetts
Woods Hole: 4
New York
Bronx: 2
New York: 2
Texas
Houston: 5
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
Lisa Richards, Nature, London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4804; E-mail: [email protected]
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