From Manipulating Molecules to Leaping Lizards

Latest news from Nature 5 January 2012

This press release contains:

---Summaries of newsworthy papers:

Vaccines: Protection against resilient SIV

Physics: Now you detect it, now you don’t

Planetary science: Forecasting Titan’s methane cycle

Oncology: Mapping the outcome for breast cancer

Climate science: How the Arctic Ocean freshens up

Materials science: Self-assembly with a twist

And finally… Leaping lizards and dinosaurs

---Mention of papers to be published at the same time with the same embargo

---Geographical listing of authors

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[1] Vaccines: Protection against resilient SIV (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10766

Vaccine protection against acquisition of a stringent strain of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in rhesus monkeys is demonstrated in Nature this week. The protection is associated with a specific antibody response elicited by the vaccine. These findings may help ongoing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vaccine development.

Despite recent advances in HIV vaccine development, understanding of the immune responses required for protection against infection is limited and no preclinical studies have reported protection against acquisition of infection by heterologous neutralization-resistant virus. Dan Barouch and colleagues evaluate the protective efficacy of vaccines expressing three antigens, known as Gag, Pol and Env, against heterologous neutralization-resistant SIV (SIVMAC251) in rhesus monkeys. They observe a delay in acquisition of SIV in vaccinated monkeys following repeated challenges with SIVMAC251. Protection against acquisition is correlated with Env-specific antibody responses, which the authors postulate may be critical for delaying infection, although the precise role of Env-antibodies remains unclear.

The specific vaccines evaluated here are themselves not novel but the observed protective effect in a stringent non-human primate model of SIV infection has not been seen before.

CONTACT
Dan Barouch (Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 617 735 4485; E-mail: [email protected]

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[2] Physics: Now you detect it, now you don’t (pp 62-65; N&V)

A ‘time cloak’ that makes an event temporarily undetectable, albeit on the picosecond scale, is described in this week’s Nature. The work could represent a step towards the development of spatio-temporal cloaking.

Recent developments in spatial cloaking show that it is possible to hide an object by manipulating electromagnetic waves around it, creating a ‘hole in space’. Such devices currently have limited functionality. Here Moti Fridman and colleagues demonstrate that a related effect, temporal cloaking, can be achieved. They manage to create a ‘hole in time’ for around 40 trillionths of a second (40 picoseconds).

The fibre-based system steers light ‘around’ an event so that no evidence (a change in the temporal or spectral properties of the light beam) of the event is detectable, by speeding up and slowing down different parts of a light beam. This effect is achieved using a split time-lens that breaks light up into its slower (red) and faster (blue) components, thereby creating a tiny temporal gap.

CONTACT
Moti Fridman (Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA)
Tel: +1 607 255 0657; E-mail: [email protected]

Robert Boyd (University of Rochester, NY, USA) N&V author
Tel: +1 585 275 2329; E-mail: [email protected]

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[3] Planetary science: Forecasting Titan’s methane cycle (pp 58-61)

Simulations of the methane cycle on Saturn’s moon Titan, which is very similar to Earth’s water cycle, are presented in Nature this week. The model may help to explain the formation of features such as lakes, clouds and rivers of methane, and could predict future changes.

Tapio Schneider and colleagues use general circulation models to perform simulations of Titan’s methane cycle. In their model, the formation of lakes in polar regions is due to accumulation of cold-trapped methane and occurs preferentially in the north, which has a longer rainy season. In low-latitude regions, rare but intense storms occur around the equinoxes, producing enough precipitation to carve river-like features. Their simulation of cloud distribution indicates that clouds form primarily in middle and high latitudes of the summer hemisphere (which until recently has been the southern hemisphere).

From these simulations, the authors predict that, with the beginning of summer in the north, clouds will begin to form around the northern polar regions and lake levels will rise. New observations of Titan will confirm or reject these predictions.

CONTACT
Tapio Schneider (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 626 395 6143; E-mail: [email protected]

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[4] Oncology: Mapping the outcome for breast cancer (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10730

An assessment of the function of a key transcription factor in most breast cancers, performed in primary breast tumours for the first time, represents a technological advance in this field. The work is published in Nature this week and reveals how clinical outcome is related to differential oestrogen receptor-α (ER) binding and how these events are regulated.

Most breast tumours express the ER and this transcription factor represents an important drug target for the treatment of breast cancer. To understand the role of ER binding events in patient outcome, Jason Carroll and colleagues map transcription factor binding sites in primary breast cancer. They find distinct ER binding profiles that are mediated in part by a protein called FOXA1 and are associated with better or worse clinical outcome. Different ER binding patterns may, therefore, be predictive of outcome in ER-positive cancer, the authors conclude.

CONTACT
Jason Carroll (Cancer Research UK, Cambridge, UK)
Tel: +44 1223 404510; E-mail: [email protected]

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[5] Climate science: How the Arctic Ocean freshens up (pp 66-70)

A new combination of observational methods provides detailed information on variations in freshwater distribution and circulation in the Arctic Ocean. The assessment, reported in Nature this week, highlights the important influence of runoff in the Arctic Ocean and reveals the underlying mechanisms controlling changes in salinity.

Freshening in the Canadian basin of the Arctic Ocean between the 1990s and 2008 has been attributed to increased sea-ice melting, contributions from runoff, and strengthening of the Beaufort Gyre (a wind-driven ocean current). James Morison and colleagues use a new combination of satellite data (ocean altimetry and ocean-bottom pressure), together with traditional hydrography, to assess water freshening between 2005 and 2008. Their results show that a cyclonic shift in the ocean pathway of runoff from the Eurasian Basin strongly affects the increasing freshwater content in the Canadian basin. From their observations the authors infer that these changes are controlled by an increase in Arctic Oscillation (sea-level pressure variations) rather than by the Beaufort Gyre.

CONTACT
James Morison (University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA)
Tel: +1 206 543 1394; E-mail: [email protected]

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[6] Materials science: Self-assembly with a twist (AOP; N&V)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10769

A strategy for manipulating molecules that leads to a new class of adaptable materials is described in Nature this week. The study demonstrates that the structure of a material can be determined by the geometry of the constituent molecules, an approach that could be used in a variety of soft-matter systems.

Chirality ― the ‘handedness’ of molecules ― affects many properties of materials and can also control the self-assembly of colloidal particles, Zvonimir Dogic and colleagues demonstrate. They exploit the chiral twist of rod-like viruses to manipulate the surface tension in a one-virus-thick membrane structure. Dextran is also present in the membrane to induce attractive interactions between the viruses, which would otherwise repel each other. The degree of twist in the viruses is temperature dependent, so by reducing the temperature the energetic cost of creating edges is lowered, which leads to the spontaneous formation of a variety of polymorphic assemblies depending on the degree of chiral twist.

The researchers go on to manipulate these structures with optical tweezers, facilitated by the mechanical properties of the membranes, and obtain more complex architectures.

CONTACT
Zvonimir Dogic (Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 781 736 2167; E-mail: [email protected]

Andreas Bausch (Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany) N&V author
Tel: +49 89 289 124 80; E-mail: [email protected]

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[7] And finally… Leaping lizards and dinosaurs (AOP; N&V)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10710

Leaping lizards use their tails to control their body orientation actively when they leap, reports a study published in Nature. The work may provide inspiration for the next generation of manoeuvrable search-and-rescue robots.

Recent research has suggested that geckos use their tails to stabilize themselves during climbing and gliding, but evidence from studies of lizard tail loss is less clear. Robert Full and colleagues video-recorded red-headed Agama lizards leaping towards a vertical surface after vaulting on an obstacle with variable traction, designed to produce different degrees of disruption to the lizards’ body angular momentum. They also produced a lizard-sized robot (‘Tailbot’) with a removable, active tail that uses sensory feedback to stabilize pitch as it drove off a ramp.

The authors show that lizards control the swing of their tails in a measured manner, using sensory feedback, to redirect angular momentum from their body to their tail, stabilizing body attitude in the air. The results, combined with mathematical modelling, also support John Ostrom’s 1969 hypothesis that theropod dinosaurs, such as Velociraptor mongoliensis, used their tails as a dynamic stabilizer during rapid or irregular movements.

CONTACT
Robert Full (University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA)
Tel: +1 510 642 9896; E-mail: [email protected]

R. McNeill Alexander (University of Leeds, UK) N&V author
Tel: +44 113 34 32911; E-mail: [email protected]

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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.

CZECH REPUBLIC
Prague: 4

THE NETHERLANDS
Leiden: 1

UNITED KINGDOM
Cambridge: 4
London: 4
Nottingham: 4

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Berkeley: 7
Irvine: 1
Palmdale: 3
Pasadena: 3, 5
Maryland
Rockville: 1
Massachusetts
Bethesda: 1
Boston: 1
Southborough: 1
Waltham: 6
Woods Hole: 6
New York
Ithaca: 2

North Carolina
Durham: 1
Washington
Seattle: 5

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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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Published: 05 Jan 2012

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