From the Amazon Basin to the benefits of Exercise

Latest news from Nature 19 January 2012

This press release contains:

---Summaries of newsworthy papers:

Genetics: Cognitive stability is in our genes

Metabolism: The protective effects of exercise

Geophysics: How diamond-containing magmas emerge

Environment: Amazon Basin in transition

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

---Geographical listing of authors

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[1] Genetics: Cognitive stability is in our genes (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10781

Research that examines the contribution of genetics to cognitive ageing in humans by studying a group of almost 2,000 individuals in childhood and in old age is published in Nature this week. The analysis of lifetime cognitive measures shows that there is a high genetic correlation between intelligence in childhood and in old age.

Cognitive stability varies throughout life and we have estimates of the genetic contributions to intelligence at different ages, but the genetic contribution to differences in cognitive aging is difficult to study. Ian Deary and co-workers explore this contribution using a unique dataset from individuals whose intelligence was measured at age 11 years and again at 65, 70 or 79 years. They find that genetic factors seem to underlie the differences in intelligence stability across the human lifespan. The estimates of genetic contributions to cognitive stability and change achieved in this study imply that a search for the genetic causes of lifetime cognitive change is warranted.

CONTACT
Ian Deary (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Tel: +44 131 650 3452; E-mail: [email protected]

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[2] Metabolism: The protective effects of exercise (AOP)
DOI: 10.1038/nature10758

A possible mechanism underlying some of the beneficial metabolic effects of exercise on health is reported in Nature this week. Research in mice shows that exercise induces autophagy, an intracellular ‘recycling system’ that allows cells to adapt to changing nutritional and energy demands.

The cellular mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of exercise on human health, including protection against metabolic disorders such as diabetes, are incompletely understood. Autophagy, which has been shown in animal models to protect against diseases such as cancer, aging and insulin resistance, is induced by exercise in the skeletal and cardiac muscles of mice, Beth Levine and co-workers report. However, mutant mice incapable of eliciting this effect during exercise have reduced endurance, show altered glucose metabolism, and are more susceptible to high-fat diet-induced glucose intolerance, which exercise normally helps to protect against. The authors infer that exercise-triggered autophagy may have a crucial role in improving the impaired glucose tolerance and metabolism that occur in diet-induced obesity.

These studies have identified BCL2 as a regulator of exercise-induced autophagy and the associated beneficial effects. Thus, Levine and colleagues suggest that manipulation of this protein and/or the autophagy pathway may represent a potential approach to treating or preventing impaired glucose metabolism.

CONTACT
Beth Levine (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA)
Tel: +1 214 648 0493; E-mail: [email protected]

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[3] Geophysics: How diamond-containing magmas emerge (pp 352-356)

A model to describe how dense kimberlite magmas, known for sometimes containing diamonds, rapidly rise to the Earth’s surface is published in Nature this week. The work proposes a mechanism that leads to a reduction of the magma’s density and drives the rapid and accelerating ascent.

Kimberlite magmas originate deep in the Earth, and despite being dense in crystals they have relatively high ascent rates. The unmixing of dissolved volatile compounds in kimberlite, such as carbon dioxide and water, is considered to be critical to providing sufficient buoyancy for the rapid ascent. James Russell and colleagues use a series of high-temperature experiments to uncover a mechanism for the production of this volatile phase.

Their model constrains the parental composition of kimberlite and how mineral uptake alters its composition, thereby reducing carbon dioxide solubility, leading to reduced density and increased buoyancy.

CONTACT

James Russell (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada)
Tel: +1 778 995 7710; E-mail: [email protected]

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[4] Environment: Amazon Basin in transition (pp 321-328)

A Review in this week’s Nature shows that the southern and eastern Amazon forest is experiencing a transition in energy and water cycles. Preliminary evidence also suggests that the Amazon may be transitioning from a net carbon sink to a net carbon source.

Eric Davidson and colleagues examine recent research on the effects of climate change and disturbances such as deforestation and fire on the functioning of the Amazon Basin. Such research shows that although the Amazon is resilient to individual disturbances, such as drought, multiple disturbances override this resilience. The effects of global and regional climate change interact with land-use change, logging and fire, increasing the vulnerability of forest ecosystems to degradation. This Review provides a framework for understanding the associations between natural variability, drivers of change (such as climate change and human influences), responses and feedbacks in the Amazon Basin.

An accompanying World View article will appear in this issue of Nature.

CONTACT
Eric Davidson (The Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, MA, USA)
Tel: +1 508 444 1532; E-mail: [email protected]

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ALSO IN THIS ISSUE…

[5] Gravitational detection of a low-mass dark satellite at cosmological distance (pp 341-343; N&V)

[6] Coherent singlet-triplet oscillations in a silicon-based double quantum dot (pp 344-347)

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ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION

[7] Neuron-type specific signals for reward and punishment in the ventral tegmental area
DOI: 10.1038/nature10754

[8] DNA breaks and chromosome pulverization from errors in mitosis
DOI: 10.1038/nature10802

[9] Genome-wide structure and organization of eukaryotic pre-initiation complexes
DOI: 10.1038/nature10799

[10] Pathway complexity in supramolecular polymerization
DOI: 10.1038/nature10720

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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
Brisbane: 1
Parkville: 1

BRAZIL
Belém: 4
Brasilia: 4
Minas Gerais: 4
Rio Branco: 4
Sao Paulo: 4

CANADA
Vancouver: 3

GERMANY
Munich: 3

PUERTO RICO
San Juan: 4

THE NETHERLANDS
Dwingeloo: 5
Eindhoven: 10
Groningen: 5

UNITED KINGDOM
Aberdeen: 1
Edinburgh: 1

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
California
Davis: 5
Malibu: 6
San Francisco: 2
Santa Barbara: 4, 5
Massachusetts
Boston: 2, 7, 8
Cambridge: 4, 5, 7
Falmouth: 4
Maryland
College Park: 4
Missouri
St Louis: 2
New York
New York: 4
Pennsylvania
University Park: 9
Texas
Dallas: 2

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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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Published: 19 Jan 2012

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