This press release contains:
Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Infectious disease: Bacteria fight against dengue (pp 450-457; N&V) *PRESS BRIEFING*
Atmospheric science: Studying clouds in a CLOUD chamber (pp 429-433)
Comment: Antibiotics may be damaging beneficial bacteria permanently (pp 393-394)
Fossils: Marsupials and placental mammals split 160 million years ago (pp 442-445)
Astronomy: Star formation in the Milky Way (AOP)
Infectious disease: Collaring the source of the cholera pandemic (AOP)
Virology: Inhibiting the Ebola virus (AOP)
And finally… A star-swallowing black hole caught in the act (pp 421-428; N&V)
Mention of papers to be published at the same time
Geographical listing of authors
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[1] & [2] Infectious disease: Bacteria fight against dengue (pp 450-457; N&V *PRESS BRIEFING*
The development of a Wolbachia bacterium that significantly reduces the amount of mosquitoes carrying dengue fever is reported in a paper in this week’s Nature. A second paper reports the successful introduction of this Wolbachia strain into a natural population.
Control options for dengue are currently very limited and have focused on reducing populations of the major mosquito vector Aedes aegypti. However, these strategies are failing to reduce dengue incidence in tropical communities and there is a need for effective alternatives.
Scott O’Neill and colleagues report the successful transinfection of A. aegypti with a strain of wMel Wolbachia — a natural insect symbiont that facilitates its transmission through cytoplasmic incompatibility, where species are unable to form viable offspring. The team achieve this while retaining high maternal transmission and without imposing a fitness cost.
In a second study, O’Neill and co-workers report the successful invasion of the wMel Wolbachia infection into two natural A. aegypti populations in Australia. The work represents the first case where wild insect populations have been transformed to reduce their ability to act as vectors of human disease agents.
This strain, and the method used to integrate it into insect populations, has the potential to provide sustainable dengue control at low cost with a relatively simple deployment system suitable for implementation in developing countries.
CONTACT
Scott O’Neill (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia)
Tel: +61 7 3346 9213; E-mail: [email protected]
Jason Rasgon (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 410 502 2584; E-mail: [email protected]
**Please note the Australian SMC will be hosting an online press briefing UNDER STRICT EMBARGO at 10.30am Australian Eastern Time on Tuesday 23 August. Authors Scott O’Neill, Ary Hoffman and Scott Ritchie will discuss their research. To participate in the briefing, please go to: https://aussmcus.webex.com/aussmcus/onstage/g.php?d=824930030&t=a. If you can’t follow the briefing online using audio streaming, you can follow the audio only by telephone instead. Call 1 800 671 909 (toll free in Australia) or visit this site to find the toll-free number for your country; when prompted, enter the access code 824 930 030# . A recording of the press briefing will be available on the Nature press site soon afterwards.**
For more information please contact the Nature press office.
[3] Atmospheric science: Studying clouds in a CLOUD chamber (pp 429-433)
Particle physics meets atmospheric chemistry this week in Nature, with the publication of the first results of the CLOUD experiment at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Using a beam of charged particles from CERN’s Proton Synchrotron to mimic cosmic rays in the Earth’s atmosphere, Jasper Kirkby and colleagues have obtained quantitative insight into the role of ions — and ammonia molecules — in facilitating the nucleation of the atmospheric aerosols that act as seed particles for clouds.
Aerosol particles containing sulphuric acid and water are known to be important for cloud formation, but concentrations of sulphuric acid vapour in the near-surface atmosphere are thought to be usually too low for particle nucleation to proceed without additional help. Ions and condensable vapours such as ammonia are known to increase the nucleation rate, but quantitative measurements of the effects of these species have been lacking.
Kirkby and colleagues were able to obtain such measurements in controlled conditions, by exposing a gas-filled chamber to a beam of ionizing particles. The authors observed substantial increases in nucleation rate due to ammonia and ions, but conclude that additional species, most probably organic compounds, are required to account for observed nucleation rates in the low-level atmosphere. Because most atmospheric ions are produced by galactic cosmic rays — which in turn are influenced by the solar wind — the findings may eventually contribute to an understanding of how some climate variability might be caused by the Sun.
CONTACT
Jasper Kirkby (CERN, Geneva, Switzerland)
Tel: +41 22 767 4593; E-mail: [email protected]
Comment: Antibiotics may be damaging beneficial bacteria permanently (pp 393-394)
Overuse of antibiotics may be causing long-term damage to friendly flora, increasing our susceptibility to infection and disease, warns Martin Blaser in a Comment piece in Nature this week.
The average child in the United States and other developed countries receives 10–20 courses of antibiotics by the age of 18. Early evidence from Blaser’s lab and others hints that sometimes our microbiome never fully recovers. In fact, Blaser suggests, that these long-term changes may be fuelling the dramatic increase in conditions such as obesity, type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, allergies and asthma, which have more than doubled in many populations.
“Even before we understand the full scope, there is action we should take,” Blaser writes. He calls on doctors to reduce the overuse of antibiotics, particularly in children and in pregnant women — who are often prescribed antibiotics before childbirth. Other options include developing more targeted drugs, and products that protect and replace the friendly bacteria. “We must make use of the available technology to protect and study our bacterial benefactors before it is too late,” he says.
CONTACT
Martin Blaser (New York University, NY, USA)
Please contact via:
Lorinda Klein (Media relations, New York University)
Tel: +1 212 404 3533; E-mail: [email protected]
[4] Fossils: Marsupials and placental mammals split 160 million years ago (pp 442-445)
The fossilized remains of the earliest placental mammal discovered so far are described in Nature this week. The new fossil is around 160 million years old, suggesting that the key evolutionary split between placental mammals and marsupials must have occurred at least 35 million years earlier than previously thought.
Today, 90% of mammals, including humans, are placentals. The timing of the split from marsupials is key to understanding the evolution of mammals. Zhe-Xi Luo and colleagues describe a previously unknown species of placental mammal, based on fossil evidence from Liaoning Province in China. The fossil indicates that these early placental mammals were small creatures, adapted for climbing and living in trees. The age of the fossil suggests that there was a higher rate of mammal evolution in the Jurassic period than previously believed.
CONTACT
Zhe-Xi Luo (Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
Tel: +1 412 622 6578; E-mail: [email protected]
[5] Astronomy: Star formation in the Milky Way (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10359
*** This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 24 August 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 25 August, but at a later date. ***
A study of pulsating variable stars called Cepheids in the nuclear bulge of the Milky Way provides some information on star-formation history. The observations reported in Nature this week suggest that there was a period of increased star formation about 25 million years ago.
The nuclear bulge at the centre of the Milky Way contains the highest density of stars in our Galaxy (outside of globular clusters), but the star-formation history and processes involved are poorly understood. Classical Cepheids have pulsation periods that decrease with increasing age, the distribution of which can be used to probe star-formation history.
Surveying the nuclear bulge, Noriyuki Matsunaga and colleagues identify three classical Cepheids with pulsation periods of around 20 days and a calculated age of 25 million years. None were found with longer (younger) or shorter (older) pulsation periods, leading the authors to infer that the rate of star formation was higher about 25 million years ago than it was 30 to 70 million years ago.
CONTACT
Noriyuki Matsunaga (University of Tokyo, Japan)
Tel: +81 264 52 3360; E-mail: [email protected]
[6] Infectious disease: Collaring the source of the cholera pandemic (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10392
*** This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 24 August 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 25 August, but at a later date. ***
The current pandemic of cholera originated in the Bay of Bengal in the 1950s and has repeatedly spread through the world from this origin. A genome analysis reported in Naturethis week provides a robust framework for further elucidating the evolution of the pandemic and for studying its local evolution.
Vibrio cholerae is the bacterium responsible for a reported 3–5 million cases of cholera each year; including the current pandemic, there have been seven historically acknowledged cholera pandemics. The classical biotype of V. cholerae has been implicated in the first six pandemics, whereas the ‘El Tor’ biotype is associated with the seventh pandemic. To understand the underlying evolutionary changes to the bacterium over time, Julian Parkhill and colleagues use whole-genome sequencing to identify markers in 154 V. cholerae genomes. They reveal that the seventh pandemic has a common ancestor that has spread from the Bay of Bengal in at least three independent but overlapping waves since the 1950s.
In addition to identifying a pattern of ongoing local evolution, the authors identify multiple transcontinental transmission events. Moreover, a notable factor in the ongoing pandemic evolution is the acquisition of an antibiotic resistance element.
CONTACT
Julian Parkhill (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, UK)
Tel: +44 1223 494975; E-mail: [email protected]
[7] & [8] Virology: Inhibiting the Ebola virus (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10348
DOI: 10.1038/nature10380
*** This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 24 August 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 25 August, but at a later date. ***
Unique features of the infection pathway of potentially deadly filoviruses (including Ebola) are uncovered by two papers in this week’s Nature. The findings reveal possible targets for antiviral strategies in humans — of which there are currently no approved agents — and identify small molecules that could inhibit infection.
Although the delivery of viral particles into the cell is not fully understood, additional host factors are thought to be required to assist the entry of filoviruses and could represent therapeutic targets. Thijn Brummelkamp and colleagues perform a genome-wide genetic screen in human cells to identify factors required for entry of Ebola virus. Together with genes affecting aspects of lysosome function, a cholesterol transporter, NPC1, seems to have a critical role in assisting Ebola entry. Cells defective for this factor are resistant to infection and a known small-molecule inhibitor of NPC1 prevented virus infection in cultured cells.
The second study, by James Cunningham and co-authors, also recognizes NPC1 as an essential host factor for Ebola virus infection. They demonstrate that NPC1 binds directly to the virus glycoprotein and is involved in virus infection at a step after cleavage of the glycoprotein by cathepsin B. Moreover, in a screen of small molecules they identify a novel benzylpiperazine adamantane diamide-derived compound that inhibits Ebola virus infection.
CONTACT
Thijn Brummelkamp (Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, MA, USA) Author paper [7]
Tel: +31 20 512 1891; E-mail: [email protected]
James Cunningham (Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA) Author paper [8]
Tel: +1 617 355 9058; E-mail: [email protected]
[9] & [10] And finally… A star-swallowing black hole caught in the act (pp 421-428; N&V)
A supermassive black hole has been observed as it apparently pulls apart and swallows a star that got too close. As reported by two groups in this week’s Nature, the event has provided astronomers with a rare opportunity to study the birth of a ‘relativistic jet’ — a high-speed outflow of ionized matter, launched by the accretion of material from the star onto the black hole.
Most galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centres, with masses of millions or even billions of Suns. Their powerful gravitational fields have strong gradients that can destroy passing stars, producing a bright flare of ultraviolet light and X-rays as the stellar debris accretes onto the black hole. The aftermath of this process has probably been observed several times, as slowly fading emission from distant galaxies, but until now, the onset of such an event has never been observed.
David Burrows and colleagues report observations of a bright X-ray flare from an extragalactic object detected by the Swift satellite on 25 March of this year. From the flare’s spectral signature and time evolution, the authors conclude that it comes from the accretion of material onto a million-solar-mass black hole. From radio observations of the same object, Ashley Zauderer and colleagues find that it coincides with the centre of a galaxy, and that the source of the emissions is expanding at a velocity close to that of light. Both groups conclude that the accretion of material from a disrupted star has produced a relativistic jet — an outcome that was not predicted by theoretical models.
CONTACT
David Burrows (Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA) Author paper [9]
Tel: +1 814 863 2466; E-mail: [email protected]
Ashley Zauderer (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA) Author paper [10]
Tel: +1 404 784 1359; E-mail: [email protected]
Davide Lazzati (North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 919 513 0926; E-mail: [email protected]
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[11] Germ-layer and lineage-restricted stem/progenitors regenerate the mouse digit tip (pp 409-413)
[12] Identification of a plastidial sodium-dependent pyruvate transporter (pp 472-475)
ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION
*** This paper will be published electronically on Nature's website on 24 August 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 25 August, but at a later date. ***
[13] The mechanism of membrane-associated steps in tail-anchored protein insertion
DOI: 10.1038/nature10362
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
Brisbane: 1, 2
Cairns: 1, 2
Melbourne: 1, 2
AUSTRIA
Innsbruck: 3
Vienna: 3
BRAZIL
Belo Horizonte: 1
CANADA
Toronto: 10
CHINA
Beijing: 4
FINLAND
Helsinki: 3
Kuopio: 3
GERMANY
Bonn: 10
Düsseldorf: 12
Frankfurt am Main: 3
Leipzig: 3
INDIA
Kolkata: 6
ISRAEL
Tel Aviv: 10
ITALY
Capoterra: 9
Frascati: 9
Merate: 9, 10
Milan: 3
Monteporzio Catone: 5, 9
Palermo: 9
Rome: 5
JAPAN
Higashi-Hiroshima: 12
Kyoto: 12
Nagoya: 12
Saitama: 12
Saitama : 9
Tokyo: 5, 9
Wakayama: 12
KENYA
Nairobi: 6
KOREA
Kyeonggi-do: 6
Seoul: 6
Yuseong-gu : 9
PORTUGAL
Lisbon: 3
REPUBLIC OF KOREA
Seoul: 9
RUSSIA
Moscow: 3
SOUTH AFRICA
Krugersdorp: 10
Observatory: 5
Rondebosch: 5
SWEDEN
Göteborg: 6
SWITZERLAND
Geneva: 3
Villigen: 3
TAIWAN
Chung-Li: 9
Taipei: 9
THE NETHERLANDS
Amsterdam: 7
UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge: 6, 10, 13
Hinxton: 6
Leeds: 3
Leicester: 9
London: 9
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Berkeley: 10, 12
Big Pine: 10
Davis: 2
Pasadena: 3, 10
Stanford: 7, 9, 11, 12
Colorado
Boulder: 3
Illinois
Chicago: 13
Massachusetts
Billerica: 3
Boston: 7, 8
Cambridge: 7, 10
Maryland
Baltimore: 9
Bethesda: 1, 13
College Park: 10
Columbia: 9
Fort Detrick: 7
Frederick: 8
Greenbelt: 9
Missouri
Saint Louis: 8
North Carolina
Raleigh: 1
New Mexico
Socorro: 10
Nevada
Las Vegas: 9
New York
Bronx: 7, 8
New York: 1
Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh: 4
University Park: 9, 10
Tennessee
Oak Ridge: 9
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
Rebecca Walton, Nature, London
Tel: +44 20 7843 4502; E-mail: [email protected]
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