This press release contains:
---Summaries of newsworthy papers:
Fossils: Many views to a kill
Astrophysics: Largest black holes observed to date
Neuroscience: Making light of drug addiction
Comment: Asia’s space race
Neuroscience: How sound can invoke fear
Cancer: A future for niche therapies?
Geoscience: Forces driving late Pleistocene glaciation
And finally... Red-giant stars in a spin
---Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo
---Geographical listing of authors
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[1] Fossils: Many views to a kill (pp 237-240)
Large, complex fossil eyes belonging to Anomalocaris, a metre-long invertebrate thought to be the top predator of the Cambrian oceans, have been discovered in the Emu Bay Shale of South Australia. The fossils, described in Nature, show that compound eyes evolved before hardened exoskeletons and provide further evidence that these creatures are indeed related to arthropods (animals with jointed limbs, such as insects and crustaceans).
The anomalocarids are a group of giant, marine predators with soft bodies and jointed frontal appendages, which dominated marine ecosystems more than 500 million years ago. They are thought to be closely related to arthropods but this affinity has remained uncertain.
In Nature this week, John Paterson and colleagues report the discovery of exceptionally well-preserved fossilized eyes attributable to Anomalocaris. The eyes measure 2–3 centimetres and are composed of around 16,000 hexagonal lenses, making them among the largest, most lens-rich compound eyes ever to have existed. The inferred acuity of
anomalocarid eyes is consistent with other evidence that these animals were highly mobile, visual predators, and their existence may have accelerated the predator–prey evolutionary ‘arms race’ that began over 500 million years ago.
CONTACT
John Paterson (University of New England, Armidale, Australia)
Tel: +61 2 6773 2101; E-mail: [email protected]
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[2] Astrophysics: Largest black holes observed to date (pp 215-218; N&V)
The discovery of the two biggest supermassive black holes ever found is reported in Nature this week. The black holes are much bigger than predicted by extrapolating from observations of attributes of the host galaxy. These results suggest that processes influencing the growth of the largest galaxies and their black holes differ from those influencing smaller galaxies.
All massive galaxies with a spheroidal component are thought to harbour supermassive black holes at their centres. The luminosities and brightness fluctuations of quasars in the early Universe suggest that some are powered by black holes with masses over ten billion times greater than our Sun. However, the largest-known black hole found so far, residing in the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87, has a mass of 6.3 billion solar masses.
Measuring data from two nearby galaxies, NGC 3842 and NGC 4889, Chung-Pei Ma and colleagues reveal that larger supermassive black holes do exist. NGC 3842 has a central black hole with a mass of 9.7 billion solar masses, and NGC 4889 has a black hole of comparable or larger mass.
CONTACT
Chung-Pei Ma (University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 510 301 3780; E-mail: [email protected]
Michele Cappellari (University of Oxford, UK) N&V author
Tel: +44 1865 273 647; E-mail: [email protected]
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[3] Neuroscience: Making light of drug addiction (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10709
Light-sensitive genetic switches can be used to calm the hyperactive behaviour observed in cocaine-addicted mice, a Nature paper reports. The study, which provides a cellular mechanism for these behavioural changes, suggests that similar interventions may eventually prove to be useful in the treatment of human addiction.
Repeated exposure to cocaine is known to enhance the strength of specific neuronal connections. Christian Lüscher and colleagues show how these changes in ‘synaptic plasticity’ can lead to abnormal, hyperactive behaviour in mice. Dampening this abnormal synaptic plasticity by use of light-sensitive genetic switches restored normal synaptic activity and abolished the hyperactive behaviour.
The authors highlight two techniques — deep brain stimulation and transcranial magnetic stimulation, which alter synaptic plasticity and are already in clinical use for other conditions — as potential therapeutic approaches. Novel protocols could, they suggest, help human addicts by reversing drug-induced behavioural changes and reducing the risk of relapse.
CONTACT
Christian Lüscher (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Tel: +41 22 379 54 23; E-mail: [email protected]
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Comment: Asia’s space race (pp 171–173)
Increasing tensions between Asian space nations make future confrontations likely, explains policy expert James Clay Moltz in a Comment piece in this week’s Nature. Greater cooperation among Asian space agencies is needed to divert the risk of further militarization in space, he writes.
Asian nations are in the midst of an unspoken space race. Although China has captured most of the attention, Japan, India, South Korea and a range of other countries in the region, such as Vietnam and Malaysia, are also expanding their space programmes. Compared to Europe, however, where countries work collaboratively within the European Space Agency, Asian nations are going it alone. In pursuing their space programmes, these countries are developing valuable scientific and technical expertise. But progress is driven more by regional rivalries rather than by shared goals. As a result, competing national agendas are fostering scientific duplication, a failure to pool resources, political mistrust and increasing military tensions.
Politics underlie today’s space competition, which is driven in part by long-festering historical and geopolitical feuds between nations such as China and India or North and South Korea. But unlike Europe and the cold-war-era United States and Soviet Union, Asia has no legacy of regional security cooperation, much less arms control. The biggest fear among military analysts, Moltz explains, is that Asia’s civilian space race may turn into an arms race. Greater cooperation among Asian space agencies and governments is urgently needed, he argues.
CONTACT
James Clay Moltz (Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, USA)
E-mail: [email protected]
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[4] Neuroscience: How sound can invoke fear (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10674
Researchers identify a neural circuit in mice that may explain how fear learning is driven in response to sound. The report in this week’s Nature provides insights on how behavioural learning is controlled and enabled.
Learned behavioural responses, such as those associated with sound, involve changes in the way information is processed by specific neural circuits. How these changes are implemented or how interactions between different types of neurons within the circuits contribute to the process of learning are not well understood. Andreas Lüthi and colleagues discover a distinct disinhibitory circuit in mice that is critical to the process of learning associative sound-based fear. This circuit is identified in the auditory cortex, a region of the brain responsible for processing sound information.
The neural circuit implicated in this study involves disruption of inhibitory action on cortical output neurons, suggesting an important relationship between various cortical neuron types involved in information processing.
CONTACT
Andreas Lüthi (Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research,
Basel, Switzerland)
Tel: +41 61 697 8271; E-mail: [email protected]
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[5] Cancer: A future for niche therapies? (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10694
Cancer stem cells can alter their immediate cellular environment in such a way so as to promote metastasis, a Nature study reveals. The finding has implications for therapeutic design.
Cancer stem cells are a subset of cancer cells that sustain tumour growth — in certain brain and breast cancers, for example. Joerg Huelsken and colleagues identify a group of cancer stem cells that cause metastasis in a mammary tumour model. As the stem cells infiltrate their secondary target, the lung, they induce local connective tissue cells to
produce a protein called periostin, which supports the growth of metastases by boosting a particular signalling pathway in the tumour cells.
Blocking periostin function prevented metastasis. Therapies designed to target the microenvironment or ‘niche’, rather than the cancer cell itself, could thus prove useful in the clinic.
CONTACT
Joerg Huelsken (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
Tel: +41 21 693 0751; E-mail: [email protected]
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[6] Geoscience: Forces driving late Pleistocene glaciation (pp 229-232)
Novel statistical evidence presented in Nature this week confirms that deglaciations over the past million years were controlled by two types of orbital forcings.
The termination of cold glacial periods has long been thought to be paced by variations in the Earth’s orientation to the Sun and obliquity (tilt) has been shown to pace the late Pleistocene glacial cycles. But until now, it has not been clear to what degree obliquity, precession (orbital axis orientation), or a combination of the two controlled deglaciations. Peter Huybers now uses advances in timing and statistics to conclude that precession as well as obliquity paces such deglaciations.
CONTACT
Peter Huybers (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 495 8391; E-mail: [email protected]
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[7] And finally... Red-giant stars in a spin (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10612
An asteroseismic approach to studying stellar interiors reveals that the cores of red giants rotate around ten times faster than their surfaces. The findings are reported in Nature this week and provide a step towards a better understanding of stellar evolution.
When a star exhausts its supply of hydrogen fuel from the core, the central region contracts and the outer envelope expands and cools, giving rise to a red giant. To conserve the angular momentum of these stars, the core must rotate faster than the surface, but hitherto there was only indirect evidence for this. Paul Beck and colleagues provide observational evidence to support this prediction by using rotational frequency splitting of recently detected 'mixed modes' of oscillation in red giants.
Comparing observations of three stars with theoretical predictions, the authors demonstrate that the core rotation is at least ten times faster than the rotation in the outer envelopes. They conclude that applying this approach to a large sample of red giants could provide a useful tool for studying angular momentum evolution towards the end of the life of the star.
CONTACT
Paul Beck (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium)
Tel: +32 16 32 79 31; E-mail: [email protected]
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ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…
[8] Assembly of hybrid photonic architectures from nanophotonic constituents (pp 193-199)
[9] Trifluoromethylation of arenes and heteroarenes via photoredox catalysis (pp 224-228; N&V)
[10] Predicting mutation outcome from early stochastic variation in genetic interaction partners (pp 250-253; N&V)
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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
Adelaide: 1
Armidale: 1
Macquarie Park: 1
Mawson Lakes: 1
Sydney: 7
AUSTRIA
Vienna: 7
BELGIUM
Leuven: 7
Liège: 7
CANADA
Halifax: 7
Toronto: 2
CHINA
Guangzhou: 5
DENMARK
Aarhus: 7
FRANCE
Bordeaux: 4
Gif-sur-Yvette: 7
Meudon: 7
GERMANY
Berlin: 8
NETHERLANDS
Amsterdam: 7
Nijmegen: 7
SPAIN
Barcelona: 10
Madrid: 1
SWITZERLAND
Basel: 4
Geneva: 3
Lausanne: 5
Sauverny: 7
UNITED KINGDOM
Birmingham: 7
London: 1
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Arizona
Tucson: 2
California
Berkeley: 2
Moffett Field: 7
Massachusetts
Cambridge: 6
Michigan
Ann Arbor: 2
New Jersey
Princeton: 9
Texas
Austin: 2
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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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