This press release contains:
• Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Genomics: DNA sequencing technique is cheap as chips
Comment: Freeze the footprint of food
Neuroscience: Humans, the robust sharers
Microbiology: Lethal secret of bacterial secretion
And finally... Battle of the sexes
• Mention of papers to be published at the same time
• Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Genomics: DNA sequencing technique is cheap as chips (pp 348-352)
Driven by the desire to reach the $1,000 genome, researchers have developed a new DNA sequencing technology. The novel approach reported in Nature this week promises to be low cost, portable and scalable.
DNA sequencing has been limited by a number of factors including its requirement for imaging technology. To overcome this limitation, Jonathan Rothberg and colleagues focus on non-optical DNA sequencing technology, which uses scalable semiconductor manufacturing techniques. Sequencing is performed by the semiconductor-sensing device or ion chip, which directly senses hydrogen ions produced during template-directed DNA synthesis. The individual ion-sensitive chips are disposable, low cost and do not require an optical read out. The authors used their approach to sequence three bacterial genomes and a human genome.
The advent of DNA sequencing has had a profound impact on research and medicine. Continuing reductions in the cost and time for obtaining a sequence have opened up a number of new applications, such as the study of personal genomes and diseases such as cancer.
CONTACT
Jonathan Rothberg (Ion Torrent by Life Technologies, Guilford, CT, USA)
Tel: +1 203 376 9300; E-mail: [email protected]
Comment: Freeze the footprint of food (pp 287-289)
In a Comment in this week’s Nature, Jason Clay of conservation group WWF identifies eight strategies that could help to reform the food system and enable farming to feed 10 billion people, while keeping the Earth habitable.
By 2050, there will be 2 billion to 3 billion more people with three times more per capita income, consuming twice as much as now. To meet this increased global food demand, we need to find ways to do more with less, writes Clay.
Members of non-governmental organizations, academia and the private sector are working together to ‘freeze the footprint of food’ by raising food production without further expanding farmland. WWF has started work on some of these ‘food wedges’ by supporting work on genetics, food waste and agricultural carbon. In June, WWF and its partners identified neglected crops in Africa that could be bred to double or treble their productivity if their genomes were mapped and the information made available to plant breeders.
We will all feel the consequences of an unhealthy planet, but developing regions bear the worst burden. With millions starving in Africa, new solutions for feeding the planet should be applied there first. “Freezing the footprint of food will require multiple actors working on several strategies simultaneously,” says Clay. “There is no silver bullet.”
CONTACT
Jason Clay (WWF, Washington, DC, USA)
Please contact via:
Nick Conger (WWF Media Office)
Tel: +1 202 495 4668 or tel: +1 202 290 5454; E-mail: [email protected]
[2] Neuroscience: Humans, the robust sharers (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10278
*** This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 20 July 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 21 July, but at a later date. ***
Children as young as three years old instinctively share rewards more equally with others who have helped to accomplish a communal rewarding task, than with those who are present but not active in the task. This finding, reported this week in Nature, raises the possibility that humans’ inclination to share resources and rewards fairly has an evolutionary root in our early need to collaborate to gather food.
Compared to other great apes, humans are active sharers. Resources are readily distributed among others in a group, regardless of their specific contribution, based on the principles of social norms and fairness. It is unclear how innate this behaviour is and how much it is influenced by teaching of egalitarian values in early years of schooling.
Katharina Hamann and colleagues set up experiments in which children played games that led to toy rewards, although one child would receive more toys than the other. When two children worked in unison, the one who received more toys was more likely to share the extra toys than when the children worked in parallel or did not work together at all. This was in contrast to one of human’s nearest primate relatives, the chimpanzee, which shared rewards in a similar manner regardless of the other’s role in the acquisition of the reward. This is the first empirical test for the hypothesis the human cooperation differs from that of chimpanzees.
CONTACT
Katharina Hamann (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany)
Tel: +49 341 3550442; E-mail: [email protected]
[3] Microbiology: Lethal secret of bacterial secretion (pp 343-347; N&V)
The function of a widespread yet poorly understood secretion system in bacteria has been uncovered in this week’s Nature. The findings reveal that the type VI secretion system (T6SS) is used as a mechanism for competing with other bacteria.
Joseph Mougous and colleagues show that the T6SS of Pseudomonas aeruginosa is used to kill other Gram-negative bacteria. The system works by injecting enzymes that degrade peptidoglycan — a major structural constituent of the bacterial cell wall responsible for its shape and for preventing lysis — into the periplasm of neighbouring cells. P. aeruginosa protects itself by expressing immunity proteins that inhibit the lytic enzymatic activity. This process provides a fitness advantage for P. aeruginosa cells in competition with other bacteria.
These results provide a mechanistic framework for understanding the function and physiological relevance of the complex T6SS. Such potent antibacterial processes may be selected as a result of niche competition in a natural environment.
CONTACT
Joseph Mougous (University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA)
Tel: +1 206 685 7742; E-mail: [email protected]
Peggy Cotter (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 919 966 2627; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] And finally... Battle of the sexes (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10239
*** This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 20 July 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 21 July, but at a later date. ***
The essential role of a gene in sex maintenance throughout life is demonstrated in a Nature paper this week.
In mouse testes, deletion of the Dmrt1 gene during foetal development causes postnatal male-to-female sex reversal. This reprogramming may help to explain the underlying causes of human conditions where the gene is implicated.
Differentiation of precursor cells in the mammalian foetal gonad into either testicular Sertoli cells or ovarian granulosa cells is determined by the presence or absence of a Y chromosome gene, Sry. Previous research has shown that loss of a transcription factor called Foxl2 in the adult ovary can lead to differentiation of these female somatic sex cells into male cells. The sex-determining decision in males was thought to be stable but David Zarkower and colleagues show that this is not the case. Deletion of the transcription factor gene Dmrt1 in mouseSertoli cells leads to the activation of Foxl2 and reprogramming of the cells into granulosa cells. This feminization of the testes is even observed in adults.
CONTACT
David Zarkower (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA)
Tel: +1 612 625 9450; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[5] Neural network computation with DNA strand displacement cascades (pp 368-372; N&V)
[6] Postnatal loss of Dlk1 imprinting in stem cells and niche-astrocytes regulates neurogenesis (pp 381-385; N&V)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
*** This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 20 July 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 21 July, but at a later date. ***
[7] Decoherence in Crystals of Quantum Molecular Magnets
DOI: 10.1038/nature10314
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.
CANADA
Vancouver: 7
GERMANY
Leipzig: 2
SPAIN
Albacete: 6
Burjassot: 6
UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge: 6
London: 6
Newcastle upon Tyne: 3
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
La Jolla: 7
Los Angeles: 7
Pasadena: 5
Santa Barbara: 7
Connecticut
Guilford: 1
Florida
Tallahassee: 7
Massachusetts
Cambridge: 2
Maryland
Bethesda: 6
Michigan
East Lansing: 2
Minnesota
Minneapolis: 4
Washington
Pullman: 4
Seattle: 3
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