Nature (Vol. 435, No. 7042, 2 June 2005)

159 Pages·2005·16.408 MB·English

Volume 435 Number 7042 pp537-712
In this issue (2 June 2005) • Books and Arts
• Editorials • Essay
• Research Highlights • News and Views
• News • Brief Communications
• News Features • Insight
• Business • Articles
• Correspondence • Letters
• Commentary • Naturejobs
• Futures

Editorials
An auspicious victory p537
A vote by the US House of Representatives to ease restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research marks an
important turning point — whether President Bush vetoes the change or not.

Seeds in threatened soil p537
US hostility towards Syria is undermining the stability of an important seed bank for dry areas.

Too much, too soon p538
How not to promote your latest research findings in the media.

Research Highlights
Research highlights p540

News
Flu in wild birds sparks fears of mutating virus p542
Experts pressure China for samples that can be analysed.
David Cyranoski

UK research councils claim success for open-access publishing plan p543
Papers based on funded research will be posted on free websites.
Jim Giles

Special report: Back in the race p544
An almost unthinkable defeat for President Bush in Congress has put embryonic stem-cell research firmly
back on the US agenda. But with South Korea setting a pace the United States will still struggle to match,
the field's future is fraught. Nature reports on the key political battles surrounding this issue.
Erika Check

Protein structures hint at the shape of things to come p547
Consortium rapidly unravels dozens of structure puzzles.
Alison Abbott

Sidelines p547

Drug giants fail to name compounds in trial database p548
Critics charge that negative results are deliberately obscured.
Meredith Wadman

Yeast feeds debate on prolonging life p548
Fruitflies grow older when certain foods are cut.
Carina Dennis

US treasury seeks bright ideas to beat bogus dollars p549
Technology helps counterfeiters but may also hinder them.
Emma Marris

News in brief p550

News Features
Scientists with disabilities: Access all areas p552
Scientific research can be tricky at the best of times, but people with disabilities face additional
challenges both in the lab and when dealing with data. Jessica Ebert meets the researchers who are building
their own customized solutions to overcome these problems.

I
Molecular medicine: Lost in translation p556
A mysterious disease that causes children's brains to melt away is caused by errors in RNA translation.
But biologists are realizing that this horrifying condition could shed light on more common problems.
Claire Ainsworth reports.

Business
More flavour up front p559
Emma Marris

In brief p559

Correspondence
Technology managers do their bit for world health p561
Ashley J. Stevens

Ampicillin threat leads to wider transgene concern p561
Gundula Azeez

Activists should accept mainstream view of GM p561
David T. Dennis

Commentary
A fresh start for Europe's space agency p563
The European Space Agency has a strong track record and plenty of ambition to propel it into its next
30 years, says Giovanni Bignami. But key decisions must be made in the context of a new Europe.
Giovanni Bignami

Books and Arts
Expanding evolution p565
A broader view of inheritance puts pressure on the neo-darwinian synthesis.
Massimo Pigliucci reviews Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic
Variation in the History of Life by Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb

Death and taxas p566
Norman Myers reviews Insect Diversity Conservation by Michael J. Samways

Taking a tip from the past p567
John Carmody reviews Poison Arrows: The Amazing Story of How Prozac and Anaesthetics Were Developed From
Deadly Jungle Poison Darts by Stanley Feldman

Essay
Concept
The best solution p569
Optimization: this beguilingly simply idea allows biologists not only to understand current adaptations,
but also to predict new designs that may yet evolve.
William J. Sutherland

News and Views
Human behaviour: Brain trust p571
As is the case with other social interactions, financial transactions depend on trust. That fact is behind
ingenious experiments that explore the neurobiological underpinnings of human behaviour.
Antonio Damasio

Cosmology: Digitizing the Universe p572
For years, cosmologists have been racing each other to develop ever more sophisticated and realistic models
of the evolution of the Universe. The competition has just become considerably stiffer.
Nickolay Y. Gnedin

Stem cells: The road not taken p573
Developmental 'road maps' chart the steps from simple cells to mature, specialized cells. A newly
discovered variety of blood-cell progenitor doesn't fit into the accepted blood map, but should that map
be redrawn?
Hanno Hock and Stuart H. Orkin

Molecular electronics: Charged with manipulation p575
The ability to control charge transport through individual molecules sandwiched between electrodes could
lead to further miniaturization of electronics. A better understanding of how such junctions work is
crucial.
Mark Ratner

50 and 100 years ago p576

Gene therapy: The moving finger p577
DNA-cleaving enzymes trigger a repair process that can now be harnessed to correct mutations in the human
genome in vitro. This represents another step towards gene-correction strategies for treating human
disease.
Katherine A. High
II
Analytical chemistry: The Renaissance palette p577
Richard Webb

Gene regulation: Kissing chromosomes p579
A three-dimensional examination of gene regulation suggests that portions from different chromosomes
'communicate' with each other, and bring related genes together in the nucleus to coordinate their
expression.
Dimitris Kioussis

Brief Communications
Extraterrestrial meteors: A martian meteor and its parent comet p581
An image of an extraterrestrial meteor was captured as a strange streak in the sky over Mars last year.
Franck Selsis, Mark T. Lemmon, Jérémie Vaubaillon and James F. Bell, III

Insight: Autoimmunity - Free access
Produced with support from:

Insight: Autoimmunity
Autoimmunity p583
Elaine Bell and Lucy Bird

Paths to understanding the genetic basis of autoimmune disease p584
John D. Rioux and Abul K. Abbas

Cellular and genetic mechanisms of self tolerance and autoimmunity p590
Christopher C. Goodnow, Jonathon Sprent, Barbara Fazekas de St Groth and Carola G. Vinuesa

Regulation of immunity by self-reactive T cells p598
Mitchell Kronenberg and Alexander Rudensky

An array of possibilities for the study of autoimmunity p605
C. Garrison Fathman, Luis Soares, Steven M. Chan and Paul J. Utz

Design of effective immunotherapy for human autoimmunity p612
Marc Feldmann and Lawrence Steinman

Treatment of severe autoimmune disease by stem-cell transplantation p620
Megan Sykes and Boris Nikolic

Articles
Simulations of the formation, evolution and clustering of galaxies and quasars p629
Volker Springel, Simon D. M. White, Adrian Jenkins, Carlos S. Frenk, Naoki Yoshida, Liang Gao, Julio Navarro,
Robert Thacker, Darren Croton, John Helly, John A. Peacock, Shaun Cole, Peter Thomas, Hugh Couchman, August
Evrard, Jörg Colberg and Frazer Pearce

Interchromosomal associations between alternatively expressed loci p637
Charalampos G. Spilianakis, Maria D. Lalioti, Terrence Town, Gap Ryol Lee and Richard A. Flavell

Highly efficient endogenous human gene correction using designed zinc-finger nucleases
p646
Fyodor D. Urnov, Jeffrey C. Miller, Ya-Li Lee, Christian M. Beausejour, Jeremy M. Rock, Sheldon Augustus,
Andrew C. Jamieson, Matthew H. Porteus, Philip D. Gregory and Michael C. Holmes

Letters
A resolved outflow of matter from a brown dwarf p652
Emma T. Whelan, Thomas P. Ray, Francesca Bacciotti, Antonella Natta, Leonardo Testi and Sofia Randich

Ultrafast non-thermal control of magnetization by instantaneous photomagnetic pulses
p655
A. V. Kimel, A. Kirilyuk, P. A. Usachev, R. V. Pisarev, A. M. Balbashov and Th. Rasing

Field regulation of single-molecule conductivity by a charged surface atom p658
Paul G. Piva, Gino A. DiLabio, Jason L. Pitters, Janik Zikovsky, Moh'd Rezeq, Stanislav Dogel, Werner
A. Hofer and Robert A. Wolkow

Arctic freshwater forcing of the Younger Dryas cold reversal p662
Lev Tarasov and W.R. Peltier

Seismological constraints on a possible plume root at the core−mantle boundary p666
Sebastian Rost, Edward J. Garnero, Quentin Williams and Michael Manga

III
Discovery of a short-necked sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic period of Patagonia
p670
Oliver W. M. Rauhut, Kristian Remes, Regina Fechner, Gerardo Cladera and Pablo Puerta

Oxytocin increases trust in humans p673
Michael Kosfeld, Markus Heinrichs, Paul J. Zak, Urs Fischbacher and Ernst Fehr

An inhibitor of Bcl-2 family proteins induces regression of solid tumours p677
Tilman Oltersdorf, Steven W. Elmore, Alexander R. Shoemaker, Robert C. Armstrong, David J. Augeri, Barbara
A. Belli, Milan Bruncko, Thomas L. Deckwerth, Jurgen Dinges, Philip J. Hajduk, Mary K. Joseph, Shinichi
Kitada, Stanley J. Korsmeyer, Aaron R. Kunzer, Anthony Letai, Chi Li, Michael J. Mitten, David G. Nettesheim,
ShiChung Ng, Paul M. Nimmer, Jacqueline M. O'Connor, Anatol Oleksijew, Andrew M. Petros, John C. Reed,
Wang Shen, Stephen K. Tahir, Craig B. Thompson, Kevin J. Tomaselli, Baole Wang, Michael D. Wendt, Haichao
Zhang, Stephen W. Fesik and Saul H. Rosenberg

SV40-encoded microRNAs regulate viral gene expression and reduce susceptibility to
cytotoxic T cells p682
Christopher S. Sullivan, Adam T. Grundhoff, Satvir Tevethia, James M. Pipas and Don Ganem

Insights into E3 ligase activity revealed by a SUMO−RanGAP1−Ubc9−Nup358 complex
p687
David Reverter and Christopher D. Lima

Structural basis for nuclear import complex dissociation by RanGTP p693
Soo Jae Lee, Yoshiyuki Matsuura, Sai Man Liu and Murray Stewart

Structure of oxidized -haemoglobin bound to AHSP reveals a protective mechanism for
haem p697
Liang Feng, Suiping Zhou, Lichuan Gu, David A. Gell, Joel P. Mackay, Mitchell J. Weiss, Andrew J. Gow
and Yigong Shi

Structural characterization of the molecular platform for type III secretion system
assembly p702
Calvin K. Yip, Tyler G. Kimbrough, Heather B. Felise, Marija Vuckovic, Nikhil A. Thomas, Richard A.
Pfuetzner, Elizabeth A. Frey, B. Brett Finlay, Samuel I. Miller and Natalie C. J. Strynadka

Naturejobs
Making a move on mobility p709
Grass roots organization seeks more mobility data for Europe
Paul Smaglik

Futures
Dial M for middleware p712
Dirty work down on the Pharm.
David Hall

IV
2.6 Editorial 537-538 MH 31/5/05 2:36 PM Page 537
www.nature.com/nature Vol 435 |Issue no. 7042|2 June 2005
An auspicious victory
A vote by the US House of Representatives to ease restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research marks an
important turning point — whether President Bush vetoes the change or not.
L
ast week, the US House of Representatives voted by 238 to 194 overseas, with South Korean research making headline news just
to reverse the policy restricting embryonic stem-cell research ahead of the vote, and from state governments, whose own initia-
that was implemented by President George W. Bush back in tives in this sphere are forging ahead in California, New Jersey and
2001 (see page 544). elsewhere.
The measure will now be taken up by the Senate, where it has a Even if the measure passed by the House becomes law, the United
good chance of success. However, Bush said both before and after States would retain more restrictions on publicly funded research
the House vote that he will veto the measure if it reaches his desk. than do nations such as South Korea and Britain, both of which
Even that won’t erase the significance of this first victory in the allow publicly supported scientists to use somatic cell nuclear trans-
Republican-controlled House for advocates of stem-cell research. fer to derive fresh embryonic stem-cell lines. The US measure would
The fact that 50 Republican members voted for the change in policy allow federal funding only for work on embryos left over from
underlines the fact that the pendulum of public opinion is swinging in vitrofertilization clinics.
strongly in favour of allowing more of the research to go ahead. In the Senate, Sam Brownback (Republican, Kansas) has already
That augers well for the eventual loosening of federal policies that said that he will attempt to block
have kept scientists’ hands tied in the United States. Some influential a vote on the stem-cell measure, “The desperate language
Republicans — including Nancy Reagan, the wife of a former presi- so that for the measure to pass it used by opponents of
dent, and conservative Utah senator Orin Hatch — have spoken out will need the support of 60 out
embryonic stem-cell
in favour of embryonic stem-cell research, making it easier for others of the 100 senators. If it obtains
research suggests they
to publicly support the work as well. these votes, the bill will arrive on
Indeed, the desperate language used by opponents of embryonic President Bush’s desk — and he’ll know they are losing
stem-cell research suggests they know they are losing the debate. face a difficult choice. the debate.”
Tom DeLay (Republican, Texas), majority leader in the House, said The proponents of stem-cell
on Tuesday last week that a vote for the stem-cell bill was a vote “to research have mooted the idea of some sort of compromise, which
fund with taxpayer dollars the dismemberment of living distinct might, for example, update the 2001 policy to allow publicly funded
human beings for the purposes of medical experimentation”. work on more recently derived stem cells. But the president has
There’s no indication that the public is buying this. Polling evi- chosen to draw what he sees as a moral line in the sand that he feels
dence suggests that most Americans instead have high hopes for the he cannot cross. He has threatened to make this the first bill that he
research, and biomedical advocacy groups have done an effective job has vetoed in four-and-a-half years in office. But the veto, if it is used,
convincing lawmakers that the research deserves a chance to fulfil will place him squarely against public opinion in the United States,
these hopes. Years of tireless lobbying by these groups played a major which increasingly views embryonic stem-cell research not with fear,
role in the 24 May victory. So too did competitive pressure from but with hope. ■
Seeds in threatened soil lentils, catalogued and stored in sealed plastic bottles inside giant
refrigerated vaults.
ICARDA often finds itself having to rebuild agriculture at the
US hostility towards Syria is undermining the end of military and civil conflicts. The centre is in effect a lender of
stability of an important seed bank for dry areas. last resort for farmers and scientists who have nowhere else to go
when their seeds run out.
T
hirty kilometres from Aleppo in Syria, not far from the birth- When Taliban fighters looted Afghanistan’s national seed store in
place of agriculture, is the International Center for Agricul- 2002, they took the empty plastic bottles, leaving the seeds behind.
tural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). It includes an Even so, the country’s scientists needed ICARDA’s help to rebuild
international gene bank that holds seeds in trust on behalf of the the store. And shortly before the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003,
world’s dry countries. Iraqi scientists sent a ‘black box’ across the border to ICARDA con-
Organized through the World Bank and funded by international taining copies of the country’s seed stocks. The action was timely, as
donors, ICARDA’s gene bank holds samples of 131,000 individual Iraq’s seed bank, in the Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib, was looted
seeds for plants that form part of the diets of one billion people who and destroyed during the insurgency. ICARDA plans to use the
live in Central and West Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. The contents of the box to help regenerate Iraqi farming.
seeds include different varieties of barley, beans, chickpeas and But now the centre’s host country is itself feeling the heat of US
537
© 2005 Nature PublishingGroup
2.6 Editorial 537-538 MH 31/5/05 2:36 PM Page 538
EDITORIALS NATURE|Vol 435|2 June 2005
rhetoric. The US government has always been a generous financial The world’s gene banks are in a parlous state, as a new report
supporter of the centre’s activities. But in the words of the State (“Safeguarding the future of US agriculture”) published jointly by the
Department, Syria is autocratic, is a state sponsor of terrorism, and US Department of Agriculture and the University of California
is believed to be developing weapons of mass destruction. Continu- makes clear. Of the 1,460 gene banks around the world, only 35 meet
ing US sanctions and some discussion in the United States about international standards for long-term storage. These include the
possible ‘regime change’ are caus- gene banks of ICARDA and of the other Future Harvest Centres.
“$260 million is a ing nervousness. The FAO, moreover, says that nearly-one fifth of the 5.4 million
relatively small price to One response would be to seeds stored in gene banks are degenerating.
pay to conserve the pack the seeds into storage boxes The US report also urges the Bush administration to support the
and airlift them out of Syria, but Global Crop Diversity Trust, and not without good reason. Pests and
world’s food heritage and
the threat of US military action plant diseases are causing losses to US agriculture of up to $33 bil-
secure the future supply
currently seems too remote to lion each year, and there is a strong fear that new threats could cause
of food for the world.” warrant such drastic action. even more damage. US agricultural researchers are currently scour-
Much better, for ICARDA and ing the world’s gene banks for seed varieties that can resist these
for the 14 other ‘Future Harvest Centres’, would be for more support diseases. Chief among such diseases are a fungus that is currently
to be given to the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an international invading US soybean fields, and potato blight of the kind that caused
fund to build more gene banks around the world and to improve the Irish potato famine, which is destroying potatoes worth some
the conditions of existing ones. The trust was set up jointly by the $400 million each year.
United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the The US government is currently spending more than $1 billion
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. It says per week on military operations in Iraq. By comparison, a $260-
it needs an endowment of $260 million to safeguard seeds used in million endowment is a small price to pay to conserve the world’s
world agriculture and to improve the condition of the gene banks agricultural heritage and to secure the future food supply of the
where they are stored. United States and the rest of the world. ■
Too much, too soon bridge-based journal, Reproductive BioMedicine Online, which has
the unusual policy of making abstracts of submitted papers available
on its website as soon as the articles are sent out for peer review.
How not to promote your latest research findings The full paper is kept confidential until it is accepted and published.
in the media. So science reporters informed of the findings by a telephone brief-
ing had access to an abstract that had not been peer reviewed — and
A
tour de force; an impressive advance; years ahead of its time. to nothing else.
When South Korean researchers declared last month that It can’t yet be determined for certain if the Newcastle team was
that they had created stem-cell lines genetically matched to intending to ride the wave of publicity for the South Korean paper,
individual patients, commentators were ready with superlatives, or if it simply submitted its paper to the journal at a fortuitous
and rightly so. The paper (W. S. Hwang et al.Sciencedoi:10.1126/ moment. And in an ideal world, science reporters would know the
science.1112286; 2005) is a major step towards the use of stem cells difference between a significant
in the study and treatment of disease. breakthrough and a local, incre- “The premature release of
In Britain, however, many usually well-informed members of the mental result. incomplete information,
public may be labouring under the illusion that it is their nation, and But the premature release of without peer review and
not South Korea, that is pushing back the boundaries of stem-cell this incomplete information,
without making it clear
research. For just as Hwang’s paper appeared in press, a second one without any form of peer review
to journalists that it
— or, at least, an abstract of one — sprang forth from a team of biol- and without making it clear to
ogists at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. This group, led journalists that the work had not has not been refereed,
by fertility specialist Alison Murdoch, had not matched Hwang’s been refereed, is contrary to good is contrary to good
achievements — they merely described the creation of a cloned scientific practice. The paper
scientific practice.”
embryo, not the extraction of cell lines — but they stole most of his could, in principle, be revised or
thunder in the UK press. even rejected after peer review, in which case the public would have
If this were just a routine case of domestic media favouring local been misinformed. The absence of a paper also prevents other
achievements, it wouldn’t matter much. But the manner in which researchers from assessing or responding to the Newcastle results.
the Newcastle team made its discovery public has consequences Industrial companies already release claims to the media while
that reach beyond one day’s headlines. As researchers in the field keeping data confidential for commercial reasons, and that’s frus-
have been angrily informing Naturesince the two pieces of work trating enough. The last thing the science community needs is for
appeared, the approach taken in this case risks damaging science publicly funded academic researchers to start playing the same
and its public perception. game. And to do so in the technically and ethically contentious arena
The Newcastle team submitted its work to an independent Cam- of stem cells is playing with fire. ■
538
© 2005 Nature PublishingGroup
2.6 Res Highlights MH 27/5/05 12:25 PM Page 540
Vol 435|2 June 2005
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
Baby blues Y/OSF
R
GE
A
Proc. R. Soc. Lond. Bdoi:10.1098/rspb.2005.3057 K IM
(2005); Biol. Lett.doi:10.1098/rsbl.2004.0274 (2005) REA
Prime examples of a biological trade-off have AYB
D
been discovered in two species of bird: caring
for too many offspring in one year limits
reproductive success the next.
On Norway’s frozen north coast, a team led
by Sveinn Hanssen of the University of Tromsø
added eggs to the clutches of female common
eiders (Somateria mollissima). The birds lost
so much weight while sitting on the clutches,
which were at the extreme of the usual
sizes, that their fecundity dropped the
following year.
Meanwhile, researchers from Auburn
University in Alabama gave male eastern
bluebirds (Sialia sialis, pictured) large broods
of young to look after and found that they
struggled to produce their trademark
plumage the following season. Birds with a
lighter parental load sported much brighter
finery and enjoyed better mating success.
QUANTUM PHYSICS similar to television static; in one patch, the CELL BIOLOGY
Dancing vortices noise was superimposed on a particular The matrix: unloaded
pattern. The dyslexic children needed greater
Phys. Rev. Lett.94,190401 (2005) contrast to spot which patch hid the pattern. J. Cell Biol.169,1–11 (2005)
Pushing around vortices in a sea of ultracold The group’s findings contradict the popular A family of enzymes once thought to
atoms could shed light on how phase hypothesis that defects in the neurons of the encourage tumour development could
transitions work in superconductors, magnocellular pathway — a connection also inhibit it. A team at the University
suggest theorists led by Nick Bigelow of the between the retina and the brain — are of California, Los Angeles, has found that
University of Rochester in New York. responsible for deficits in visual processing in MMPs, or matrix metalloproteinases, restrict
Cooling and confining a cloud of gas atoms dyslexia. The magnocellular pathway is in the the growth of new blood vessels in a tumour.
can force them to form a type of matter clear because the dyslexic children Cancerous tumours grow their own blood
known as a Bose–Einstein condensate. Start demonstrated the same need for greater supply by making a protein called VEGF,
this substance swirling and the vortices that contrast when shown patterns designed to which encourages blood vessels to form.
form tend to settle into a regular static stimulate a different visual pathway. The VEGF sticks to the matrix surrounding
pattern. But Bigelow predicts the vortices can cells, and the MMPs work by cutting it free.
be pushed through a series of different MALARIA Surprisingly, the free VEGF does not
arrangements by a grid of laser beams. The Caught in the act promote the formation of blood vessels, but
pattern changes as the beams brighten. The instead triggers the enlargement of existing
sudden rearrangements would be similar to PLoS Biol.3,192 (2005) vessels that do not support tumour growth.
structural phase transitions in other systems The liver-infecting action of the malaria
— including those that can cause power loss parasite has been caught on camera for the
in superconducting wires. firUst ttei mFree.vert from the New York University NET/SPL
NEUROSCIENCE School of Medicine and her colleagues ASSE
Patch work modified the parasite Plasmodium berghei CH
so that it fluoresced. They then used a digital BSIP,
Nature Neurosci. doi: 10.1038/nn1474 microscope to watch it invade the livers of
The difficulties dyslexic people have in live mice. Their recordings show the
reading may stem from a poor ability to parasites moving into the livers’ Kupffer cells,
detect visual signals through background confirming suspicions that these phagocytic
noise, suggest Ann Sperling, now at cells are their entry point. Kupffer cells
Georgetown University in Washington normally digest and demolish anything
DC, and her colleagues. foreign. Frevert’s images prove that the malaria
They showed 28 dyslexic and 27 non- parasite must disable this response, allowing
dyslexic children two patches of visual noise it to spread to other liver cells and multiply.
540
© 2005 Nature PublishingGroup
2.6 Res Highlights MH 27/5/05 12:25 PM Page 541
NATURE|Vol 435|2 June 2005 RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS
MSEhReCUllR sYhock A/SPL JOURNAL CLUB
R
GE Philippe Janvier
A
Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 234,27–38 (2005) GR National Museum of
The Mariner 10 probe’s encounters with N/A. Natural History, Paris
O
Mplaenrceut rhya sin a 1m97ag4n aentdic 1 f9ie7l5d s—ho aw seudr pthriasti nthge MPRESSI Are strpaecceisa ltihset idni secaorlvye vrye rotfe abnrates
find for scientists who expected the small T’S I ancient fossil fish — his first
planet’s iron core to have completely TIS impressions, later worries,
R
solidified. Although studies have since shown A
and the relief prompted by
that a thin liquid shell of iron may persist
a recent paper.
around the core, it was not clear whether such
a shell could sustain the kind of circulation RNA INTERFERENCE In 1999, my colleague Zhu Min
needed to generate a magnetic field. Silent assassin showed me the first photographs
Now researchers led by Sabine Stanley at of what he thought were two
Harvard University use computer models Nature Biotechnol. doi:10.1038/nbt1101 (2005) 535-million-year-old fish, found in
to show that convection in a shell can indeed Hopes are high for using RNA interference Chengjiang, China. If they were
produce magnetic fields similar to those — a recently discovered gene-silencing tool actually fish, these fossils would be
observed at Mercury (pictured right). The — to treat disease. The challenge has been the earliest evidence of vertebrates
work cannot rule out magnetic rocks in the to get the RNA molecules into the right cells, — by about 50 million years.
planet’s crust as the source of the field, but and it seems that antibodies might work as My first reaction was that these
NASA’s MESSENGER mission should be delivery vehicles. small, leaf-shaped creatures did
able to test the theory when it arrives at Judy Lieberman’s group at Harvard indeed resemble vertebrates. I
Mercury in 2008. Medical School fused an antibody that wrote a News and Views article for
targets HIV-infected cells with protamine, Nature(402,21–22; 1999) that
MEDICINE a compound that binds nucleic acids. explained how the fossils matched
Breathe easy The researchers demonstrated that small our conception of an ideal
interfering RNAs bound to this fusion vertebrate ancestor. The fish
Sciencedoi:10.1126/science.1108228 (2005) protein are carried across infected cells’ seemed to combine aspects of
Experiments in mice have revealed that nitric membranes, and retain their activity. the small, headless lancelet and the
oxide metabolites play a role in preventing Lieberman’s small interfering RNAs were eel-like lamprey, which is one of the
asthma, a condition suffered by more than designed to suppress a gene that HIV needs most primitive fish alive today.
100 million people around the world. in order to replicate, and they even managed Could it be too good to be true?
A team headed by Jonathan Stamler of to inhibit the virus in cells known as Many similar specimens
Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, Tlymphocytes. Transferring foreign genetic turned up soon after, providing
engineered mice to lack the enzyme material into these cells has been particularly information about the head and
S-nitrosoglutathione reductase, leading difficult. In mice, the antibody complex backbone of this early group,
to elevated levels of metabolites known as selectively sought out cells expressing now known as Myllokunmingia.
S-nitrosothiols. Even when exposed to HIV proteins after it was simply injected However, I became obsessively
allergens known to induce asthmatic into the bloodstream. worried that all the recorded
symptoms in mice, the engineered animals specimens lacked a tail tip. What
were able to breathe easily, suggesting the RADIOACTIVITY if the tail looked like that of some
metabolites help to keep their airways open. Zinc’s double decay of the strange, soft-shelled
Medicines that inhibit the reductase enzyme arthropods that also come from
might, therefore, be able to prevent asthma Preprint nucl-ex/0505016 at http://arxiv.org (2005) the Cambrian period? I began to
attacks in humans. The existence of radioactive isotopes that fear that myllokunmingiids might
can decay through the simultaneous not be fish — that we had been led
GENETICS emission of two protons was predicted astray by some extraordinary case
The bald truth more than 40 years ago. But it was not until of convergence.
2002 that the first such isotope, iron-45, So I was relieved when I read
Am. J. Hum. Genet. (in the press) was synthesized. the first description of a complete
Male-pattern baldness is a misfortune that Now Bertram Blank and his colleagues at myllokunmingiid tail in the Journal
men inherit mainly from their mothers. A the French heavy-ion accelerator GANIL of Evolutionary Biology(X.-G. Zhang
systematic survey of the genomes of brothers have produced a second unstable proton- and X.-G. Hou 17, 1162–1166;
from 95 families reveals that variability rich element. They smashed a beam of 2004). It is a good fish tail,
in the androgen receptor gene on the nickel-58 into a nickel target and isolated pointed to the rear and bearing
X chromosome is the single most important eight nuclei of the isotope zinc-54 the a vertical web that joins the tail
cause. The research, led by Markus Nöthen resulting fragments. Seven of these nuclei to the dorsal fin.
of the University of Bonn, Germany, adds to decayed by means of the two-proton Certain enigmatic features of
evidence from an earlier investigation of male- mechanism, with an estimated half-life myllokunmingiids remain, but I am
pattern baldness that implicated the same of around 3 milliseconds, supporting the happy that the question of their tail
gene. As yet, the mechanism remains unclear. predictions of theoretical models. is settled.
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NEWS
Flu in wild birds sparks
fears of mutating virus
T
he deaths in China of more than 1,000 exceptional case,” says Maria Cheng, the
migratory birds from the flu strain H5N1 WHO’s spokeswoman in Beijing. “We want to
has left experts struggling to square the see the virus as soon as we can.”
outbreak with their knowledge of the virus. At China had not reported any cases of H5N1
the same time, rumours are beginning to in people or birds since a previous poultry out-
circulate that humans in the region have also break ended in June 2004. But several Internet
fallen victim to the disease — although official sites including ProMED-mail, an online data-
sources have so far denied this. base of health-related news, are now reporting
The H5N1 strain has killed at least 53 peo- that people are dying as a result of the latest
ple in Asia since late 2003, and is seen as one of outbreak (see ‘China rejects Internet claims of
the prime candidates for sparking a human human cases’, below). Some sources are claim-
pandemic. Migratory birds can act as carriers ing there have been up to 120 fatalities.
of flu, but their role in spreading highly The Chinese health authorities deny that
dangerous strains such as H5N1 remains a any human cases have been found. Since early
matter for debate. May, when 178 suspicious waterfowl deaths
Until the latest outbreak, only a handful of were first reported in the Niannaisuoma vil-
migratory birds were known to have died from lage of northeastern Qinghai, authorities have
H5N1. This led some experts to suggest that quarantined the area, requiring people going
the migrants are asymptomatic carriers of the there to wear goggles, masks and gowns.
virus, causing the occasional outbreak among Increased surveillance so far has found no sick
poultry populations along their migration people, officials say.
routes. Others believed that the small number There is no evidence of human to human
of deaths among migrants were simply the transmission in the area, and large-scale trans- In a flap: a sudden outbreak of H5N1 flu in AP
result of wild birds picking up the infection mission from so few wild birds directly to migratory birds has caught experts unaware. YU/
from local ducks or chickens. humans is unlikely, says virologist Vincent V.
But the revelation on 21 May that at least Deubel, who heads the Pasteur Institute in
AGES 5d0ie0d w firlodm bi rtdhse avcirrousss hfiavse ddrifafmeraetnitc saplleyc aieltse hraedd Snhoat nmgheaani. “aA m moorree v viirruulleenntt ffoorrmm ffoorr bhiurdms adnose,”s fbleu fsouurnvdei,”l lhane csaey nse, tawdodrinkg. “ tMhaatn hyi so cfo thlleeamg uweos nin’t
M
Y I the situation. With H5N1 now seeming to be he explains. “It would be unrealistic to expect Qinghai are reporting many more deaths every
T
GET highly infectious and lethal among the so many human deaths from an outbreak in day. “I’m very worried about this.” In fact, less
OS/ migrants, experts fear that the virus’s genes only 500 birds.” than a week after the figure of 519 bird deaths
HOT may have mutated or reassorted. But the numbers of reported bird deaths was released, Jia Youling, director of the veteri-
A P To find out, the World Health Organization might hugely underestimate the actual toll, says nary bureau at China’s agriculture ministry,
N
CHI (WHO) is pressuring China to release samples Fusheng Guo, coordinator for the UN Food revised the number to more than 1,000.
for sequencing and analysis. “This is an and Agriculture Organization’s regional avian- Baoxu Huang, director of China’s National
China rejects Internet claims of human cases
Reports that the outbreak of avian flu among the disease. This time, the initial Boxun report
wild birds in Qinghai has resulted in any human claimed six people had died of avian flu in
cases of the disease are being denied by China. Qinghai in May. As Naturewent to press, Boxun
Rumours that people had been infected began was reporting as many as 200 cases and 121
on 25 May, when the ProMED-mail Internet dead, and detailing the locations.
alert system relayed a translation of an article The reports were swiftly rebuked on 26 May
from the independent Chinese website Boxun by Xinhua, the Chinese official press agency,
News, which is based in the United States. which denied that any human cases had
ProMED warned that the information was occurred. But the statement added that
unofficial and needed to be confirmed. “hospitals in Gangca County, where the avian flu
It was an article on Boxun News that first led cases were reported, have opened up a separate
ProMED to report the outbreak of severe acute outpatient department for feverish patients”.
respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003. Until then, A spokesman for the World Health
Health workers disinfect an area in Qinghai. China had been able to cover up the presence of Organization (WHO) says that the agency has
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