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This press release is copyright Nature.
VOL.473 NO.7348 DATED 26 MAY 2011
This press release contains:
Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Perspective: 2020 vaccine vision
News and Comment: The future of vaccines
Planetary science: How Mars had a growth spurt
Biology: Immune response to HIV
Outlook: Time to test and treat this silent killer
Physics: How to measure an electron
Virology: Long-term evolution of swine flu
Neuroscience: Molecular pathology in autism
Biology: A new antidiabetic signalling pathway
And finally… They might be Ordovician giants
Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Perspective: 2020 vaccine vision (pp 463-469)
What does the future have in store for vaccine development? A Perspective published in Nature this week discusses the prospects for HIV, malaria and tuberculosis vaccines in the next decade. These infectious diseases represent one of the major global public health challenges, having eluded conventional vaccine development.
Rino Rappuoli and Alan Aderem note that previous advances in vaccinology have largely been due to innovative immunological concepts. For example, tuberculosis vaccine development has benefited from strategies for intracellular antigen presentation, prime–boost regimes and new adjuvant treatments.
Approaches such as systems biology or structure-based design of antigens could help to overcome some of the problems encountered in current vaccine research. These new tools will hopefully improve the understanding of the mechanisms involved in vaccine-mediated protection. The authors stress that continued innovative trial design is needed to accelerate vaccine development.
CONTACT
Rino Rappuoli (Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, Siena, Italy)
Tel: +39 577 243 414; E-mail: [email protected]
News and Comment: The future of vaccines (pp 436-447)
Public-health officials confronting vaccine scares need to make sure that doctors and nurses fully understand the benefits and documented risks of a vaccine, argues Julie Leask in a Comment article in Nature this week. With one-fifth of parents from a survey in five European countries reporting doubts about having their child vaccinated, strategies should target groups where real gains can be made: parents who are worried and doubtful, rather than convinced vaccine refusers.
The article is part of Nature’s 26 May special issue on vaccines, which explores the unwarranted safety fears that threaten the promise of new vaccines.
A second Comment article argues that Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which has struggled to completely wipe out the disease, despite having made fantastic progress in its initial years, erred in not engaging with local communities. Its top–down approach allowed rumours to snowball into widespread refusals to accept the vaccine. Heidi J. Larson and Isaac Ghinai write that the campaign is now paying greater attention to local concerns and enlisting local leaders to help get the effort back on track.
Along with these opinion pieces, the special issue includes News Features on HIV vaccine innovator Bruce Walker and on the real risks of vaccines.
CONTACT
Julie Leask (University of Sydney, Australia)
E-mail: [email protected]
Heidi J. Larson (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK)
Tel: +44 7947 204 226; E-mail: [email protected]
For background information on the News Features, please contact the press office.
[2] Planetary science: How Mars had a growth spurt (pp 489-492; N&V)
A report in Nature this week indicates that Mars accumulated its mass rapidly. The findings provide important clues to the birth of Mars and its geological evolution and may explain its small size.
Determining the timing of Mars’s accretion (growth by the collection of smaller planetesimals, of size 10–100 kilometres, in the Sun’s protoplanetary disk) could help in the understanding of the origin of this planet. Nicolas Dauphas and Ali Pourmand present precise hafnium–tungsten–thorium isotopic data from Martian meteorites that show that Mars accreted very rapidly. They calculate that it reached about half of its present size in 1.8 million years or less. These findings are consistent with it being a stranded planetary embryo.
Their results also demonstrate that Mars grew before dissipation of the nebular gas, during the time when ~100-kilometre-sized objects, such as the parent bodies of chondrites, were still being formed.
CONTACT
Nicolas Dauphas (University of Chicago, IL, USA)
Tel: +1 773 702 2930; E-mail: [email protected]
Alan Brandon (University of Houston, TX, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 713 893 0727; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Biology: Immune response to HIV (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10117
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 25 May at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern Time 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 26 May, but at a later date. ***
A protein that inhibits an early step of the HIV-1 life cycle in immune cells has been identified in a paper published online in Nature this week. The antiretroviral protein is pivotal to the fate of infection by HIV-1 in immune cells of the myeloid lineage
HIV-1 is unable to replicate efficiently in dendritic cells. Some lentiviruses, such as HIV-2 and simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), produce a protein called Vpx that overcomes the block to replication, but the target of this protein has not been identified, until now. Monsef Benkirane and colleagues show that Vpx induces the degradation of a protein called SAMHD1. Reducing the expression of SAMHD1 in dendritic cells makes them more permissible to HIV replication.
These findings may be useful for the development of dendritic-cell-targeted vaccines against HIV/AIDS, the authors suggest.
CONTACT
Monsef Benkirane (Institut de Génétique Humaine and CNRS, Montpellier, France)
Tel: +33 4 34 35 99 98; E-mail: [email protected]
Outlook: Time to test and treat this silent killer (pp S18-19)
The US government has all but ignored the threat to public heath posed by the hepatitis C virus (HCV) and is underfunding critically important prevention, treatment, and research programmes, argues Brian R. Edlin in an Outlook article in this week’s Nature. If we know how to detect, treat and, in many cases, cure the disease, why isn’t the United States doing more about it?
Control of any epidemic starts with an accurate understanding of the magnitude of the problem, but the scope of the HCV epidemic in the United States is poorly characterized. And even less is known about the rate at which the virus is spreading. Despite the epidemic being unclear, basic prevention strategies could still be implemented, including testing and treating at-risk and vulnerable populations. Prevention is the cornerstone of disease control, therefore the disproportionate funding dedicated to controlling hepatitis compared to other deadly infections is especially troubling.
The United States launched a vibrant response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and has taken great strides in disease surveillance, prevention, care and treatment. This was only made possible by investing in research and services. Nothing less will mitigate the extraordinary cost to healthcare and the toll that viral hepatitis could take on public health and ultimately people’s lives.
CONTACT
Brian R. Edlin (State University of New York Downstate College of Medicine, Brooklyn, NY, USA)
E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Physics: How to measure an electron (pp 493-496; N&V)
A method of probing the shape of the electron with the highest level of precision ever achieved is described in Nature this week.
Predictions suggest that the shape of the electron is slightly aspheric; its distortion is characterized by the electric dipole moment (EDM), which is a measure of the overall polarity. Measurement of the EDM is very difficult. According to the standard model of particle physics, EDM is considered too small to be detected at current experimental sensitivities, although other theories predict larger values.
Jony Hudson and colleagues achieve the most precise measurement so far of the EDM, using cold molecule techniques. Their result is consistent with zero, which strongly suggests that electrons are spherical. These findings have implications for theories of particle physics and cosmology beyond the standard model.
CONTACT
Jony Hudson (Imperial College London, UK)
Tel: +44 20 7594 7741; E-mail: [email protected]
Aaron Leanhardt (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 734 615 5737; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Virology: Long-term evolution of swine flu (pp 519-522)
A detailed picture of the evolutionary dynamics of swine influenza viruses in southern China is reported in Nature this week. The research may shed light on the emergence of influenza pandemics in humans.
Pigs have an important role in the emergence of pandemics because they facilitate genetic reassortment in influenza viruses. However, a lack of adequate virus surveillance in pigs makes it difficult to determine the origins of pandemics, such as the 2009 H1N1 virus.
Malik Peiris and colleagues present a large data set of swine influenza isolates and swine sera collected over 12 years of systematic surveillance in Hong Kong, supplemented with samples stretching back 34 years. They report an increase in virus diversity associated with increased imports of live pigs over the same period. This inter-continental virus movement has led to reassortment and lineage replacement, a finding that may offer insights into the emergence of influenza viruses with epidemic potential.
CONTACT
Malik Peiris (University of Hong Kong, China)
Tel: +852 2875 0624; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Neuroscience: Molecular pathology in autism (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10110
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 25 May at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern Time 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 26 May, but at a later date. ***
Scientists demonstrate consistent differences between normal and autistic brains in the organization of RNA transcripts and gene splicing in an article published this week in Nature. These findings may help to shed light on underlying causal factors of the disorder.
Despite substantial progress in understanding autism genetics, whether the disease is caused by genetic or environmental risk factors that perturb common molecular pathways in the brain is poorly understood. An analysis of healthy and autistic brain tissue samples reveals differences not only in transcriptome organization but also in regional patterns of gene expression. These patterns are far less defined in the autistic brain, Daniel Geschwind and colleagues observe. In addition, they identify specific splicing abnormalities involved in the disease.
The authors suggest that these data provide a new pathway-based framework from which to assess the enrichment of genetic association signals in other psychiatric disorders.
CONTACT
Daniel Geschwind (University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 310 794 7537; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] Biology: A new antidiabetic signalling pathway (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10111
***This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 25 May at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern Time 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 26 May, but at a later date. ***
A type of phospholipid has been identified as a potential therapeutic agent for metabolic disorders, according to a paper in Nature this week.
Increased fat accumulation in the liver is correlated with diabetes mellitus. David Moore and colleagues identify a signalling pathway that can control fat levels in the liver of mice. A molecule called dilauroyl phosphatidylcholine (DLPC) leads to increased levels of bile acids that cause the fat levels in the liver to drop. DLPC also prevents fat accumulation in the liver and elicits an antidiabetic effect in mouse models of insulin resistance.
These effects of DLPC seem to go via a nuclear receptor called LRH-1. Hence, agents that act through LRH-1, such as DLPC, could increase bile acid levels and improve the fatty liver.
CONTACT
David Moore (Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA)
Tel: +1 713 798 3313; E-mail: [email protected]
[8] And finally… They might be Ordovician giants (pp 510-513)
The discovery of a collection of bizarre, fossilized sea creatures from the Ordovician of Morocco suggests that these giant animals were an important element of some marine communities for much longer than previously realized.
The anomalocaridids were a group of giant predators with soft bodies and jointed legs that dominated the Cambrian seas. The odd-looking creatures had two spiny, grasping appendages on their head, a toothy mouth apparatus, lobes on their body used for swimming and blades that probably functioned as gills, and existing specimens date from the early and middle Cambrian (542–501 million years ago).
In this week’s Nature, Peter Van Roy and Derek Briggs describe an assemblage of fossil specimens from the Early Ordovician (488–472 million years ago) of Morocco, which are much larger than any discovered in the Cambrian — one specimen is about one metre long. The Moroccan specimens are about 30 million years younger than existing anomalocaridid fossils, which indicates that these animals continued to dominate marine ecosystems long after the end of the Cambrian period.
CONTACT
Derek Briggs (Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA)
Tel: +1 203 432 8590; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[9] Catalysis for fluorination and trifluoromethylation (pp 470-477)
[10] Probing cellular protein complexes using single-molecule pull-down (pp 484-488; N&V)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
***These papers will be published electronically on Nature's website on 25 May at 1800 London time / 1300 US Eastern Time 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 26 May, but at a later date. ***
[11] A hydrothermal origin for isotopically anomalous cap dolostone cements from south China
DOI: 10.1038/nature10096
[12] Role of the ubiquitin-like protein Hub1 in splice-site usage and alternative splicing
DOI: 10.1038/nature10143
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: 8
CANADA
Toronto: 6
CHINA
Guangdong: 5
Hong Kong: 5
FRANCE
Montpellier: 3
Paris: 3, 11
GERMANY
Martinsried: 12
POLAND
Kraków: 11
SINGAPORE
Singapore: 5
SWITZERLAND
Zurich: 12
UNITED KINGDOM
London: 4, 6
Oxford: 5
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Foster City: 12
Los Angeles: 6
Moffett Field: 11
Pasadena: 11
Santa Cruz: 12
Connecticut
New Haven: 8
Florida
Jupiter: 7
Miami: 2
Georgia
Atlanta: 7
Illinois
Chicago: 2
Urbana: 10
Massachusetts
Boston: 9
Cambridge: 9
Ohio
Rootstown: 7
Tennessee
Memphis: 5
Texas
Houston: 7
Washington
Seattle: 1
PRESS CONTACTS…
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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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